NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
DAYTONA SPEEDWEEKS SPRINT UNLIMITED
DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER POST RACE PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT
FEBRUARY 16, 2013
 
Kevin Harvick Wins Third Sprint Unlimited Race
Exhibition Win is First for the Chevrolet SS Race Car
 
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (February 16, 2013) – Kevin Harvick, driver of the No. 29 Budweiser Chevrolet SS, won his third career NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Sprint Unlimited race in dominating fashion on Saturday night at Daytona International Speedway. 
Harvick led 40 of the 75 laps en route to capturing the first win for the all-new Chevrolet SS race car.  It is the eighth trip to the Sprint Unlimited Victory Lane for team owner Richard Childress.
 
Harvick’s victory gives Chevrolet its 20th win in 35 Sprint Unlimited races, more than any other manufacturer.  Eight Team Chevy drivers started tonight’s event and six of those drivers had previously visited Victory Lane at least once in the Sprint Unlimited.  
 
Tony Stewart, No. 14 Mobil 1/Bass Pro Shops Chevrolet SS, started 14th and won segment number one, of the three-segment event.   His Chevy SS was strong all night as he was able to come from the back to the front several times and finished fourth in the race. 
 
Hendrick Motorsports driver Kasey Kahne, No. 5 Farmers Insurance Chevrolet SS and teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr., No. 88 National Guard Chevrolet SS, finished the non-points race seventh and eighth respectively.   Their teammates Jimmie Johnson, No. 48 Lowe’s Yellow Chevrolet SS, and Jeff Gordon, No. 24 Drive to End Hunger Chevrolet SS, were both involved in a multi-car incident on lap 15, in the first segment.   Johnson was relegated to a 14th-place finish while Gordon was scored 17th out of the 19 cars that earned starting spots in the race.
 
Other Chevrolet competitors in the field were Juan Pablo Montoya (No. 42 Target Chevrolet SS, 10th), and Kurt Busch (No. 78 Furniture Row Chevrolet SS, 13th) who was also taken out of contention in the early on-track incident in the race.
 
The 55th running of the Daytona 500 will be the first point-paying race of the 2013 season and will take place on Sunday, February, 24th at Daytona International Speedway. 
 
KEVIN HARVICK, NO. 29 BUDWEISER CHEVROLET SS
GIL MARTIN, CREW CHIEF, AND RICHARD CHILDRESS, TEAM OWNER – RACE WINNER
 
KERRY THARP:  Joining us for the winner of our sprint Unlimited at Daytona, Kevin Harvick, Richard Childress Racing.  He’s joined by his crew chief Gil Martin.  Kevin has won three of the last five Sprint Unlimited events here at Daytona and won back to back 2009, 2010.  He joins Tony Stewart and Dale Jarrett as three‑time winners of the event, Dale Earnhardt all‑time winner of this event with six.
            New racecar, winning like that in fine fashion, how does that set you up for the rest of this week?
            KEVIN HARVICK:  Yeah, I think the biggest thing is how are we going to get Danica and Ricky on the front page tomorrow (laughter)?  I missed all you guys because you were all busy being TMZ the other day.  Saw now you all have to talk to me and I can be a complete prick (laughter).
            But, anyway, we knew that the racing was going to be different.  We just didn’t know because we hadn’t run in a big pack.  Honestly, we still haven’t because the pack got narrowed down as we got the race started there.
            The front bumpers, it’s very small contact patch as far as how you can push and how you can’t.  When things don’t line up correctly, you see what happens.  You just got to be patient.  Reminds me of how we raced 10, 11 years ago with that type of car and that type of package.
            Anytime you’re in Victory Lane here at Daytona, it’s a great day.
            KERRY THARP:  Crew chief Gil Martin, congratulations.  Looks like a strong team this year in the Sprint Cup Series.  Talk about tonight’s win and maybe just look ahead to the days ahead here at Daytona.
            GIL MARTIN:  It just shows that hard work pays off because these guys have worked long and hard, every team has, because of the things we’ve been up against.
            Tonight I couldn’t be prouder of the job Kevin did, our Chevrolet SS was strong.  The guys on pit road did a great job, coming in third, taking the lead going out, that set Kevin up.  Just looking forward for the rest of the week.
            Thursday is going to be another good race for us, but I think we’ll have enough time to get set up for Sunday and I think it’s going to be really good for us.
            KERRY THARP:  Richard, congratulations again.  Certainly Victory Lane here at Daytona is a very common place for you to visit.  I know it’s got to feel good right out of the gate winning this race.
            RICHARD CHILDRESS:  Yeah, to win the first race with the Chevy SS was a big deal for us all.  To win the Shootout like it was with the fans being involved, I thought that was really great.  I’m really proud of all the efforts at RCR.  Like I told Kevin before the race, You know how to do it.  I don’t have to tell you nothing.
            He did it right there at the end of the race, helluva job.  The pit crew, the whole team, couldn’t be prouder of the whole organization.
            Got a lot more to do.  This is just the start of a long, long 10 days here.  We’re going to be after it the rest of the week.
            KERRY THARP:  Questions now for this winning team.
 
            Q.  Kevin, you know Danica was fastest in practice today.
            KEVIN HARVICK:  Didn’t see her today, but she must not have won many poles and races in the past.
 
            Q.  Was the fact that there were 12 cars on track for most of the race limiting in how much you could learn about the drafting?  Junior and Joey Logano said the bottom didn’t get worked enough.
            KEVIN HARVICK:  I would definitely agree with that.
            I think obviously 19 cars, you knew it was going to be a smaller race than normal anyway.  But when you saw five, six, seven cars, whatever, got eliminated, you knew the moves, you were going to have to be pretty precise to make a good move.
            Everybody figured out you could really side draft and slow down that bottom lane.  The 20 definitely probably had the fastest car.  He couldn’t make it all the way by by himself through the corner and get on the straightaway because of the side draft.
            The side draft is pretty big.  We were able to run the top and kind of keep the bottom line at bay there because there weren’t enough cars
because everybody would stay up top except for three or four cars.  Didn’t have enough momentum.
            The cars are going to be able to move, things are going to move and shift a lot easier.
 
            Q.  It seems in years after what appears to be a crisis at RCR, you come back stronger.  Is there some kind of team marriage counseling you go through in the off‑season?  What did you do in the off‑season to come out of the box looking this strong?
            KEVIN HARVICK:  We went and hired these psychiatrists to tell us what we need to do.  Now we call them engineers (laughter).
            No.  I think with Eric and all the crew chiefs, the engineering staff, the amount of effort that Richard has poured in from a financial standpoint to a people standpoint, getting organized, there’s a lot of effort making sure the cars are prepared better.  Not that everybody wasn’t working just as hard.  There’s a lot more structure and engineering that goes into these cars nowadays than what there used to be.  He can tell you a lot more about that.
            Today when we were struggling with our car, there’s people with notebooks and iPads, computers.  They’re standing around talking about what everybody else has on their cars.  It’s pretty fun to see, see them all put everything together to try to fix a problem.
 
            Q.  Kevin, how did the cars react compared to what you expected?  The long range forecast for the 500 calls for highs in the low 80s.  How different do you think that’s going to be from tonight?
            KEVIN HARVICK:  Low 80s will be exactly what we were expecting because there was zero handling issues tonight.
            When we were here at the test, there were a lot of handling issues with the car sliding around.  I think that will fit more of what we were expecting when we went home from the test.  That will change the ballgame a lot if it’s not 40 degrees outside.
 
            Q.  Kevin and Gil, everyone has heard the talk about lame duck drivers, their situation.  I think you even referenced it on your radio when you won.  Why will you guys be different?
            KEVIN HARVICK:  I don’t think it’s been that big of a deal.  Kenseth did a great job with his situation.  For us, from his side of it, his guys, our guys, they don’t care.  They just want to win.
            For our side of it, it’s our jobs to control the atmosphere and the things that go around.  The atmosphere is great, honestly.  Everybody is just working towards the same goal.  That’s winning the races.  We have to be professional anyway, whether it’s lame duck or not.  You can call it whatever you want, we’re going to have a helluva lot of fun racing, having a good time, doing our jobs.
            That’s what we’re here to do.  His job is to put cars on the racetrack.  My job is to drive them.  His job is to make sure they run as fast as they can.  So as long as everybody does what they’re supposed to do, we’re all here to do a job and we have a responsibility to the people that are spending millions of dollars on the side of that car to do it as best we can.
            GIL MARTIN:  The same thing.  This is too hard to be miserable.  It’s too hard of work not to come out and try to win.  That’s not in his nature.  That’s not in our team’s nature to try not to win.
            Anybody that thinks just because of what the situation is that anybody’s going to lay down, they’re sadly mistaken because we’re going to try to win this championship.  We’re going to put forth the effort.  I know Richard is doing it, everybody at the shop is doing it.  We’re going to do whatever it takes to win it.  That’s pretty well the bottom line.
            KEVIN HARVICK:  Pride also comes in there pretty good, too.  It’s fun to prove people wrong (smiling).
 
            Q.  Kevin, when you first came in, you said it was like 10, 11 years ago.  Do you think it’s going to be the big pack when 43 cars get out there?  Is it correct that Keelan crawled for the first time today?
            KEVIN HARVICK:  He did crawl.  DeLana was actually sitting outside doing an interview.  He crawled forward.  He was good at going in reverse (laughter).  So he crawled forward for the first time.
            Actually steered the car before the race started, too.  Standing in the seat.  Left his shoe in there.  Maybe that’s a lucky shoe.
            What was the other question?
 
            Q.  When you have 43 cars out there, I heard drivers on the radio, some didn’t like being pushed.  What are we going to see?
            KEVIN HARVICK:  It’s going to be a pack, absolutely.  I think it’s going to be a pack.  I don’t think there’s going to be too many chances.  You’ll see some cars breakaway.  I think if you turn on a 2000 race, one of those races, it’s going to be very similar before we went to the wicker bill.
            You’re going to have a lot more advancing of positions when you get so many cars out there.  Tonight you’d have eight cars up top, four on the bottom.  Eight cars is always going to win over four.  It’s a difficult situation with fewer racecars.  But they were always in a pack.  Even though tonight they were somewhat in a pack.
 
            Q.  Kevin, could you talk a little bit about the block on Biffle on the last lap.  Did you have a sense of how close that was going to be?
            KEVIN HARVICK:  I knew I was going to have to block one way or the other.  I didn’t know which way it was going to be.  In the middle segment, I could tell Biffle was backing up, trying to time what his move was going to be as we got further into the segment.  I was working on my timing to back up and block that.
            With Tony, he was kind of starting to do the same thing.  As we went into the last corner, I wanted to make sure I backed up enough coming off of turn four where he couldn’t dive into turn one and block that move and make sure I backed up enough to do that.
            Those guys were coming on the outside.  I don’t know if the 14 and the 16 were side‑by‑side, but I just felt like I needed to move up and try to block that momentum.  We were able to block two of those moves.
        &nbsp
;   Everything was happening a little bit slower at that particular point then.  The cars we had in the past, you wouldn’t have been able to move up and make that happen.  Everything slowed down enough to where you could look and be able to block.  They’re just not coming 20 miles an hour faster than they used to.
 
            Q.  Talking about the block, when you’re making a move like that, how committed do you have to be?  If he made it an issue and stuck it in there, do you keep moving it up, eventually you collide?  Is it a game of chicken at that point?
            KEVIN HARVICK:  I flipped my go‑kart in my backyard on the last lap.  When you’re coming from white to checkered, it’s whatever you have to do to try to make it happen.
            I guess a game of chicken would be kind of the best way to put it.
 
            Q.  Can it be like the old days where a guy could make up dozens of positions in a lap and slice through the field like that?
            KEVIN HARVICK:  I think everybody who watched the race kind of saw how tentative everybody was in the middle at the beginning.  Then as the race went on, everybody realized that handling wasn’t as big an issue as they thought it was going to be.
            I thought I saw and heard after the race that some of those guys were making up several positions with runs through the middle.  If the cars are handling okay, you can make up those positions in the middle.
            The way it used to be, the middle was kind of the same way.  You could go through the middle, make up some time, but you had to find a way out when your momentum stopped.  You either had to go up or down.  If there’s not a hole in one of those lines to get up or down, you’re going to be stuck.  All that momentum you had going forward is soon to be stopped unless you have cars behind you, so…
            I think it’s possible, for sure.
 
            Q.  Was there something in the previous two days of practice that gave you great confidence that you had a good chance tonight to take the win?
            KEVIN HARVICK:  Yeah.  Nobody in the whole field had any clue what was going to happen, so we figured we had a good chance.
            As we walked out to driver intros, there was not one driver out there that said, Man, I feel like I can do this, do that, I feel like my car is fast.  Everybody was scared to death because they didn’t have enough cars at the test, then we came back to the Shootout.  We have provisions to have another car.  You’re just so short on cars, you didn’t want to take any chances.
            The first chances you had to take tonight were in the race because you had to because you finally got to the race.  You knew if you tore that car up, you didn’t need it anymore.  It was one of those deals where the time and the amount of cars that you had, you just didn’t want to risk putting the shop further behind for Phoenix and Vegas, all the places that are coming up, because you had to have stuff on the racetrack to be at the race.
            RICHARD CHILDRESS:  I think in the practice yesterday, whenever it was, they kept working on our car and kept making it a little better, a little better.  Like Kevin said, it’s a whole unknown for everyone.  The adjustments Gil and his guys made kept picking the car up a little.
            You got to have speed, for sure, to go out and win here.
            GIL MARTIN:  I agree.  We tried a couple of different setups actually last night because we were anticipating that the cars were going to move around a lot, were going to need a lot of grip.  As it turned out with the weather the way it is, the cars had plenty of grip, so we were having to basically race qualifying setups.  That’s kind of what we did tonight.
            I think that’s going to turn around on Thursday and Sunday with the temperature going up.  The cars are going to slip and slide a little more.  Hopefully we’re going to be prepared for that for what we have built in our car.
 
            Q.  Kevin, no one has really spoken much about the way the format all shook out.  How was that for you?  You were finding out in the cars.  Did it work out okay?  Was it a good thing?
            KEVIN HARVICK:  I think any format like this that you can involve the fans, I think it makes them appreciate that somebody’s paying attention to them and really appreciates them being a part of our sport.
            The only part, I think a lot of people look back and say, when they saw that wreck, you see the 12 cars, you see how hard it is to make moves with a limited amount of cars, eliminating cars would have been a bad deal because it just makes the racing that much harder and slows things down so much.  Because the runs are slower, there’s less people to make the bottom groove be as competitive as the top groove was.
            When you have more cars than one line, that line is going to run faster.
            All in all, I think it went pretty good.  The trophy’s really heavy (smiling).
 
            Q.  Richard, a little off topic.  Furniture Row has wrecked two cars in two days.  They’ve indicated they have something in place with you to maybe give them another car if they need one or fix them.  Can you tell us what the agreement is there?  How many do you actually have here?
            RICHARD CHILDRESS:  Well, each one of our teams, we got eight cars here, and we got three back at the shop ready to go.  We’re going to help them in any way we can.  We’ll probably have one of those cars back tomorrow, repaired.
            We got two or three more back at the shop.
            GIL MARTIN:  We have two more back at the shop.  Fortunately for them and us, this car will be sitting there.  Cleaned up, juiced up, ready to go in case it’s needed.  We got plenty of bullets in the chamber.
            RICHARD CHILDRESS:  As of now (laughter).
 
            Q.  Kevin, the wreck yesterday in practice was kind of a misjudgment of how fast one of the lanes was going.  The first wreck today was Tony somewhat misjudging where the bottom lane was.  How confident were you when you were trying to block near the end?  Do you really know yet how quick the draft can move if you get out of that lane?
     
       KEVIN HARVICK:  I think you’re exactly right.  I think everybody is trying to figure that out.  I think as the night went on, you kind of started to understand it.  I feel like things are a lot slower coming at you than what we had with the tandem stuff in the previous years.
            Just the way that things are in the car, whether it be something silly like your side mirror, mine is in a much different spot, much different shape than what it was.
            The first five or six times I looked for the mirror, it was in a different spot, and I didn’t see it because it wasn’t there.  It’s up here instead of down here, because that bar is straight.  The mirrors are in a different spot, the window nets are a little different.
            Silly stuff like that really matters because when you’ve been driving something week after week for four years, everything is in the same spot, and you move one simple thing six or seven inches, things become a lot different.
            You can anticipate where things are going to be.  But both wrecks, and I heard Matt talking about it today, both wrecks have happened because of that left side mirror, things being different compared to what they were in the past.  I’ve heard the same response from both of those guys.
            I know that sounds silly, but you know where all the keys are on your keyboard, right?
 
            Q.  Since you knew that guys could get such a run in the two‑car tandem, there wasn’t a lot of hope of blocking, are you maybe ‑‑
            KEVIN HARVICK:  ‑‑ cutting it a little closer?  For sure.  I saw the 16 coming tonight.  I looked in the mirror twice.  The spotter says I’m clear, I’m going to keep going.  I eased my way up there.  Luckily hit the bumper.  He kept saying, Clear up, clear up, clear up.  You just have to have the faith in that guy to hope he’s right.
 
            Q.  Richard, Austin was really quick this morning in the first practice.  If I’m not mistaken, he didn’t go out in the second practice.  What do you have going on with him and what are your expectations for him this week?
            RICHARD CHILDRESS:  Well, first thing, he’s got to make the race.  They got a little advantage right now.  All them guys have been doing is just tweaking, touching, rubbing, doing everything they can to that car, taking a few extra chances with the engine.  Let’s hope it makes it two laps tomorrow.
            While Kevin and everybody else has been out testing the downforce cars, they know they got to go fast to make the race.  That’s the first thing you got to do.  You got to be in the race to do anything else.
 
            Q.  Is he going to take a shot at the front row tomorrow?
            RICHARD CHILDRESS:  I don’t know.  He’ll be pretty good.  But who knows what will happen.  I think Danica right now has the star power.  She’s doing good.  I mean, she’s doing good.  They’re going to do good.  I think she’ll be the car to beat for the pole.  She’ll have a run.  We struggled today with the 29.  It was miserable as hell.
            Tomorrow will be better wherever we end up, right, Gil?
            GIL MARTIN:  That’s what I’m talking about.
            RICHARD CHILDRESS:  He ran from the back.
            KEVIN HARVICK:  If Danica sits on the pole, Dillon starts second, we might have some rumors.  Just saying.  It will be fun.  We’ll TMZ it all the way (laughter).
            RICHARD CHILDRESS:  It will be fun whatever.  I just wanted to make the race.
            KERRY THARP:  Thank you, guys.  Great show tonight.  Good luck the rest of Speedweeks.
                      

KEVIN HARVICK, NO. 29 BUDWEISER CHEVROLET SS – RACE WINNER:
THIS IS YOUR THIRD WIN IN YOUR LAST FIVE RACES HERE AT THE SPRINT UNLIMITED. YOU KNEW THE MOVE WAS GOING TO COME. YOU JUST DIDN’T KNOW WHEN AND WHERE. TELL US ABOUT THE LAST LAP COMING OFF TURN 2
“I could see those guys, the No. 16 (Greg Biffle) in the middle-half there, and then the No. 14 (Tony Stewart), they were kind of timing it as to how far they needed to get back to get that dive to the bottom, but with the top there, you could guard the bottom if they didn’t get all the way by you with the side draft and that’s really what you were looking for. So I just chose to stay on the top and I knew that the No. 14 was going to try to time it for getting down into (Turn) 1 and then the outside got a huge run and then we were able to block that run on the outside there. It was a great day for our Budweiser Chevy and I’m glad we got Speedweeks started off the right way.”
 
SO MANY UNKNOWNS; WHAT DID YOU LEARN ABOUT THIS RACE CAR?
“I think you just have to be patient with it. Handling was a lot less of an issue for us than we had anticipated. So that kind of caught us a little off-guard with the practices. But we’ve just got to wait a week and see what the weather is like as the handling may, or may not, be more of an issue as we get into the (Daytona) 500. So, there is still a lot to be learned with a full pack of cars and we’ll kind of ease into that with the Duels and then onto the big race on Sunday.”
 
YOU ALSO SAID YOU WERE KIND OF GLAD THAT MATT KENSETH GOT SHUFFLED BACK. WAS HE THE OTHER STRONG CAR OUT THERE?
“Yeah, I felt like he had the strongest car and he could make a lot happen on the bottom by himself. So, I was glad to see him get shuffled back there.”
 
THERE WAS SO MUCH UNKNOWN GOING INTO THE RACE TONIGHT. YOU KNEW TONY STEWART WAS GOING TO MAKE A MOVE. WAS THE MOVE THAT YOU EXPECTED HIM TO TRY? WHAT WAS IT LIKE JUST SITTING THERE WAITING?
“I was really kind of nervous about the No. 20 (Matt Kenseth) and the No. 14 (Tony Stewart). I thought their cars were a little bit better than what we had. But I want to thank Sprint and the race fans. This one was for everybody sitting in the stands and at home, Budweiser, Rheem, Jimmy John’s, Chevrolet and Bad Boy Buggies and Realtree, everybody that puts this team on the race track. It’s a good way to start off Speedweeks.”
 
WHAT KIND OF STATEMENT DOES THIS SEND TO PEOPLE UTTERING THE ‘LAME DUCK’ PHRASE FOR THIS YEAR?
“I think it’s just one of those deals where for us, it’s really not winning races; the politics and everything are one thing, but when we get to the race track it’s about sitting in this race car and making it as fast as it’ll go. Those guys, they don’t care about anything but winning and wanting to do good. So, we owe it to them and everybody at Budweiser and I guess we just had to take their name off the race to win it. So, it was an awesome say for us.”
 
TONY STEWART, NO. 14 MOBIL 1/BASS PRO SHOPS CHEVROLET SS – FINISHED FOURTH. TELL US ABOUT THE LAST LAP HOW IT PLAYED OUT IN YOUR MIND AND WHAT MOVES YOU COULD HAVE MADE/SHOULD HAVE MADE?
“That is why I haven’t won a Daytona 500 yet.  I’m not quite sure exactly which move to make.  I saw the No. 22 coming on the bottom. I thought they were going fast enough that I needed to move down, but I should have stayed where I was at.  We’ve got a good car anybody that questions whether Mobil 1 is the best lubricant brand in the world all they had to do was watch the first 20 laps of that race.  We proved it by going to the back, going to the front, going to the back, going to the front.  We’ve got really good race cars.  I’m really proud of the Hendrick engine department and everybody at Stewart-Haas.  To go through the winter these guys have gone through and trying to build cars at the last minute because of the shortage of parts and to bring two cars down here that are this fast.  I’m really proud of our organization right now.”

WHAT HAPPENED EARLY IN THE RACE WHEN THE BIG WRECK BROKE LOOSE?
“I got a big run on the No. 20 and I went to the bottom.  I thought I was clear.  The spotter did not clear me so I went on my own.  I thought I had enough of a run to be clear of the third-place guy.  I’m pretty sure I clipped whoever was in third.  I made a move for the lead and probably was a little anxious too early.  I was kind of stagnant where I was at and I was having fun moving forward and felt racy.”

WHAT DID YOU LEARN TONIGHT ABOUT THIS NEW GEN-6 RACE CAR?
“We learned a lot.  The good thing is we’ve got 500 miles to get it done this weekend.  We learned a lot that will help us going into Sunday.  Really proud of our team and organization that we were able to bring two really good cars like this down here.  This thing was fast today.”

LAP 15 YOU GOT TO USE SOME DIRT TRACK EXPERIENCE WHAT HAPPENED?
“I self-cleared myself I guess, I went down before the spotter cleared me.  I thought I had a big enough run that I cleared second, but I obviously hadn’t and I just barely nicked him. I just need about two more inches.”

WHAT ARE YOUR FIRST THOUGHTS ON THE WAY THE NEW CAR RACED TONIGHT?
“It is like nobody has missed a beat.  It’s almost like it’s not even a new car as far as how comfortable everybody got.  I think everybody was pretty solid right off the bat.  I think if it gets warm it could make this interesting and put it back in our hands again.  It’s still a chess match.  You’ve still got to play chess.”

YOU HAD A PRETTY EVENTFUL EVENING IF YOU COULD JUST TALK ABOUT THAT: 
“Self-cleared myself in (turn) one and wasn’t.  I don’t think I was clear obviously.  I clipped whoever was in third.  When Dale (Earnhardt) Jr. came down to the middle where he was at made me really tight.  I got up into him and then I got into him and couldn’t get off of him, bounced off of him about three times.  I made sure our spotter told him what happened, but I definitely was in enough interesting spots tonight for sure and most of them I put myself in.”

YET STILL ABLE TO RALLY FOR A GOOD FINISH SO THAT HAS GOT TO BE ENCOURAGING: 
“Tonight is the reason why I haven’t won the Daytona 500 yet.  I’m not sure where I’ve got to be on the last lap there and what to do.  We heard the Fords were ganging up and trying something.  Then saw the No. 22 car on the bottom all of a sudden, so I went where I thought was the right place to be and we lost two spots with it.  I would rather try something and it not work than stay and lose a bunch of spots and I would probably be more frustrated because I didn’t try something.”

WITH THE SIGNIFICANT CONTACT THAT YOU DID HAVE TONIGHT WERE YOU HAPPY WITH HOW THE CAR HANDLED AFTER THE FACT?
“Yeah, it really didn’t change it.  I honestly don’t know I haven’t even been to that side of the car to see what it did.  It really didn’t change my balance, so I don’t think it really changed anybody’s balance that made contact.  They are pretty solid race cars I’m pretty impressed.”

PRETTY GOOD DAY FOR YOUR TEAM YOU HAVE TO BE REALLY HAPPY: 
“I’m really proud of our organization to come in a clutch like this and have to build race cars at the last minute.  Because everybody was waiting on parts and to be able to bring three cars that today in practice were in the top eight and to have a car that we had tonight.  I couldn’t be more proud of the effort and the results that showed tonight because of it.”

DALE EARNHARDT, JR., NO. 88 NATIONAL GUARD CHEVROLET SS, FINISHED 9TH:  HOW DID THE CARS HANDLE OUT THERE TONIGHT? “It was pretty good when we had more cars. I thought the racing was real good even with 12 cars in the second segment. At the end of the race, it was just few enough cars that w
hen about eight or 10 of them started controlling the top line, the basically controlled the fate of everybody else.  You really had to get more cars moving around, and going for the lead to get a little more racing, and a little more action. But, I thought what I saw the first segment and the second segment with just a few cars out there, it was pretty dicey.”
 
DID YOUR HANDLING GO AWAY QUICKLY? OTHER DRIVERS SAID THEIR’S DID: “Really?  My car drove real good. I never had any problems with the handling. I never had any problems with the handling.”
 
DID THE ADJUSTMENTS, OR WHATEVER THEY DID TO FIX THE CAR AFTER THE SECOND SEGMENT MAKE IT FINE? “I didn’t really have any problems with my car. I don’t think we changed anything. This is the car we tested and it didn’t really run that great when we tested it. I could get run and charge up into the top-five, but it didn’t like the clean air up there. It got real draggy, just real slow up front. The No. 20 (Matt Kenseth) had a great car, and the No. 14 (Tony Stewart) was real fast, but he’s real sharp at plate racing too. The No. 29 (Kevin Harvick) had a good car. I just didn’t make enough of the right moves or  have enough car to get it going there.”
 
YOU SAID IT SOUNDED SICK: “Well, I thought I had an issue with the engine, but it was just the draft was easy to lose. With this little spoiler on the back, it’s really easy  to lose the draft because the air gets to your nose pretty quick, and the distance of the draft isn’t as far back as it used to be off the car in front of you. So, you can lose it pretty easily. You have to be real careful.  Me and the No. 99 (Carl Edwards) both lost it right there at the end of the second segment.”
 
SO DRAFTING IS GOING TO BE DIFFERENT WITH THIS CAR? “It’s different than it was last year for sure from what I saw in that race. You could still push guys, which we always…we pushed guys for years and years and years and years. Even before the COT, we were pushing each other down the straightaways and stuff. I think you can still do that. Everybody’s just got to kind of learn how we have to do it differently now. Everybody’s just got to go through trial and error on how to it. What works and what doesn’t.”
 
THERE WAS A WRECK EARLY IN TESTING. THERE WAS A WRECK EARLY IN PRACTICE YESTERDAY. THERE WAS A WRECK EARLY IN THIS RACE. HAVE YOU GUYS HAD ENOUGH CHANCE TO LEARN WITH A LOT OF CARS OUT THERE? “No, not really. A lot of the guys that weren’t in this race haven’t been in real race conditions with this car yet. So, half the field still has a lot to learn; a crash course you know. I think. So I think you are going to see a little bit of the same in the (Daytona) 500. Maybe even in one or two of the qualifiers. The qualifiers have always kind of been that way anyway. You always had one that had a big crash in it, and then one that was caution free. The bumpers aren’t perfect. They are imperfect when they line up, and that is going to cause some action and some drama out there. That is the way it used to be, and I think everybody is okay with that. The drafting and the way you work the draft, I think everybody is still kind of learning that. I learned a lot tonight, but I still think there is tons to learn.”
 
WHAT DO YOU KNOW NOW THAT YOU DIDN’T KNOW BEFORE THIS RACE? “Just a lot of little nuances about the draft. I had a good run on the No. 16 (Greg Biffle) going into third in the second segment. My run was really strong, and I thought it would be enough to clear him, and it wasn’t. The car died out pretty quick when I got down to the bottom in the clean air. Technically I thought that would be an easy pass. Hopefully the 500 car has that kind of muscle, and maybe just this car didn’t. Passing is a bit of a challenge. You have to know what you are doing, and work the momentum and see what is happening around you. It is a good challenge. I think it is really challenging. Not just pushing the car as far as you can push it, and as hard as you can push it. You have got to really think about what you are doing up there and what decisions you make, and what lines you get in. We haven’t had to worry about what line you get in for year, so that is kind of neat wondering whether the top or the bottom is going to move. Lot of different things happening out there, and everybody is just going to have to learn what works and what doesn’t.”

NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
DAYTONA SPEEDWEEKS SPRINT UNLIMITED
DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER RACE NOTES & QUOTES
FEBRUARY 16, 2013
 
 
JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE’S CHEVROLET SS – Sidelined in multi-car crash on lap 15:
WHAT DID YOU SEE FROM YOUR PERSPECTIVE?
“I didn’t see much.  I was just kind of cruising along and I saw sparks in front of me.  I knew that wasn’t good.  Then before I knew it just the cars inside of me and around me everybody just slid up the race track and into me and around we went.  I still haven’t seen the video replay of exactly what triggered it, but it started in front of me and got a bunch of us.”
HOW DID THE CARS FEEL OUT THERE?
“Felt pretty good it seems to me that we are back to where we were with the old car ’06 era somewhere in there with how the cars drafted.  So it was fun, it was nice to see Tony (Stewart) and I working the outside lane like we did.  Some guys tried it and really didn’t get very far.  Tony and I started working together like the old days and really made up some ground.  I was encouraged by the speed of my car and by the way the cars raced on the track.  I’m looking forward to the (Daytona) 500.  Hopefully I go further.  My stats on restrictor plate tracks really aren’t looking very good right now.  I’ve got to pick that up.”
 
WERE YOU SURPRISED THAT HAPPENED SO SOON IN THE RACE?
“It’s hard to say.  Plate racing we are all running so close and again I don’t know what triggered it.  I am disappointed that it was that early in the race, but I’m not sure why it happened.”
 
JEFF GORDON, NO. 24 DRIVE TO END HUNGER CHEVROLET SS – Sidelined in multi-car crash on lap 15:
“Half the battle and goal of this race is to learn something for next week’s Duel and the 500. The car was definitely, as far back as I was, they become a handful a couple laps before that. But handling wasn’t an issue. We had good handling. We need a little more speed, so we’ll work on that. But I can’t tell if guys are just getting out of control or if they’re getting hit or what’s going on. But several guys started shuffling back to the back and right there I saw somebody loose on the inside and the outside lane somehow was affected by it and it was a domino by the time it got back to me and we were in it.
 
CAN YOU TELL US YOUR VERSION OF THAT AND WHAT WERE YOU FEELING OUT THERE?
“I couldn’t see much.  We were in that bottom lane that just got shuffled back early and so we were just slowly working our way back up there.  I saw handling started to become an issue for quite a few guys, a little bit for myself, but not too bad.  I just saw somebody get sideways going down into (turn) one and then our lane checked up and they started getting turned and we started wrecking.”
 
TALK ABOUT THE HANDLING IS THAT A GOOD THING FOR NASCAR RACING?
“Yeah, but you as a driver have more responsibility now about how you are going to drive out there because the cars are going to move around a little bit more.  They are going to get turned around a lot easier, so you can’t be running into one another.  You can’t be turning across guys; you have to utilize that handling to your advantage after a longer run. I like that part of it.”
 
ANY SURPRISE IN YOUR MIND THAT IT HAPPENED THIS EARLY?
“Yes and no, I thought at the start of the race everybody was doing a pretty good job of watching.  Even when we were three-wide it wasn’t too bad. Then I started seeing some guys start to lose the handling on their car and start to get a little out of control.  I started paying a little bit more attention and was looking for cars to slide around.  They were, but no incidences until then.”
 
DO YOU KNOW WHAT THE 150’S ARE GOING TO BE LIKE NOW?
“Well, if it warms up during the daytime handling is going to be a big, big issue.  That is going to be important and so we will look at the weather.  We weren’t there long, but we learned a little bit and now we will watch what these guys are doing and try to learn some more for the duels.”
 
IT SEEMED LIKE THE INSIDE LANE WAS A BETTER LANE?
“It wasn’t for me at the beginning.  At the beginning the inside lane was no good at all.  Usually it’s not the lane it’s just how it’s formed.  If you get guys stacked up that lane will start moving, the outside seemed to move early, but then it looked like the outside also started having some handling issues as we started to get more heat in the tires.”
 
HANDLING DIDN’T CAUSE THAT WRECK RIGHT?
“I haven’t seen it, but from what I heard no.  I think handling at the end of this race when people started getting more aggressive it will probably contribute to some.  The handling is what can lose some speed.  It shouldn’t necessarily cause a wreck unless you are trying to be aggressive towards the end of a run and the handling is just not going to be as good.”
 
 

NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
DAYTONA 500
DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT
FEBRUARY 16, 2013
 
DANICA PATRICK, NO. 10 GODADDY.COM CHEVROLET SS, met with members of the media at Daytona International Speedway after leading the final practice session for the 55th running of the Daytona 500.  During the session she discussed what it would mean to win the pole tomorrow, her speed in practice and other topics.  FULL TRANSCRIPT:
 
YOU WERE FAST IN BOTH PRACTICES HOW IS YOUR CONFIDENCE HEADING INTO QUALIFYING?
“I mean I suppose being the fastest going into qualifying is as good as you could hope for.  But, I also understand that it’s a whole different day.  We could go out there on the track and just for some reason not have as much speed as we had hoped for.  We could be in an unfortunate situation with wind or weather, temperatures, clouds, so I understand that.  We have done everything we can to prepare for it.  We all feel pretty confident, but tomorrow is a different day.”
 
YOU WERE FAST AT THE TEST HERE TOO SO IT’S NOT LIKE TODAY IS A SURPRISE:
“We came here this weekend for the race with another car than what we tested.  We weren’t sure if we were going to bring the same one back or not because it ran so well.  This other car was really good in the wind tunnel so we brought it.  You always hope that the numbers from the wind tunnel translate to speed on the track and it did.  I guess that is kind of the way that it has gone here at Daytona for us is that everything that we think is going to work a certain way works the way we expect it to.  What should be faster is and that is not always the case.  Everything just seems to be going really smoothly.”
 
ARE YOU HAPPY TO BE TALKING ABOUT RACING INSTEAD OF ALL THE OTHER STUFF THAT YOU HAVE BEEN TALKING ABOUT?
“Well, I have always felt in my career that when things go well on the track the media responds to it.  So, I appreciate you all showing up here and thank you.  Make sure that you write about how good the crew is that made this car and the last car that was really fast and how strong the Hendrick engine is.  I think that is really important here at Daytona.  We are going to spend plenty of time the rest of the year talking about if a driver does something at tracks that aren’t speedways. Here at Daytona and then at Talladega it is very much about the potential of the car and the engine.”
 
WHAT DOES 196.22 (MPH) FEEL LIKE ON THE RACE TRACK HERE IN THE NEW CAR?
“I’ve never been someone that is thrilled or drawn in to racing by speed so for me I just want to be a little faster than the rest of them.  It feels like we were a little faster than the rest of them.”
 
DOES THIS GIVE YOU A GLIMPSE OF WHAT TO EXPECT TOMORROW?  DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU ARE A STRONG CONTENDER FOR THE POLE?
“Everything that we do is to make sure that we do whatever we can to be on the pole tomorrow.  That is what we all are shooting for.  As I said earlier tomorrow is a whole other day.  You’ve got to hope that the weather stays very consistent or perhaps better at the beginning when I’m going to go than at the end.  All those things play into it.”
 
YOU’VE DONE A LOT OF THINGS IN YOUR CAREER WHAT WOULD WINNING THE DAYTONA 500 POLE MEAN TO YOU?
“I think it would mean a lot of work for Joe (Crowley) and Haley (Moore) with the media (laughs).  It would be really nice.  It is a very big pole of all of them in the year for attention.  Especially for GoDaddy who is on the car, people like that, that is who that helps the most.  I mean there are other races throughout the year that as a driver you feel maybe more pleased or proud of yourself to get.  This one is a whole team effort.  I understand I know I don’t give much credit to myself about driving and turning left.  And that is true it’s very much about the car and the engine.  It is a team effort I understand that the driver can make tiny little differences out there, be smooth, and nail your shifts and being smooth with the wheel.  The pole at Daytona is very much a team pole.”
 
DO YOU THINK IT SENDS A MESSAGE IN THE GARAGE WHEN YOU ARE THE FASTEST ON THE CHART?
“I think being fastest on the chart, just being fast in general shows everyone else how dead serious Tony Gibson is with his guys and how he wants poles, he wants to give me the fastest car possible.  He is doing absolutely everything he can and is putting so much hard work into it.  I think that just shows his confidence in everyone including myself about what we can do.”
 
AFTER THE WRECK YESTERDAY DURING PRACTICE DID YOU GUYS HAVE A STRATEGY BEYOND SUNDAY AS FAR AS WHAT YOU WANT TO DO AS FAR AS LEARNING WHAT YOU NEED TO DO IN THE DRAFT WITH THE NEW CAR?
“Tonight will be very telling in the Sprint Unlimited race there is no doubt.  I saw Juan (Pablo Montoya) as I was walking back from my bus last night.  I asked him how it was and he was talking about how it felt.  He said there are five cars out there he said it is going to be completely different when we get 20 of us out together.  I have a feeling that it’s going to be what shows what you are going to see next weekend tonight.  I’m curious just like everyone else is.  I want to know how it feels and I will be listening on the radio and I will be paying very close attention to where the runs come, what the car feels like and the trouble zones.  You’ve got to get through all 500 miles to get to the end.  As I found out last year it’s not a lot of fun to fall out of the race after a few miles.”
 
HOW ENCOURAGING IS IT AS A DRIVER FOR YOUR FIRST FULL SEASON IN CUP TO COME RIGHT OUT OF THE BOX AND BE FAST WITH THIS NEW CAR?
“It feels good, it does.  There is a lot of year left and we are going to have a lot of challenging weekends.  I have no doubt about it.  But, we need to enjoy the good ones.  So far this has been a good one.  There is no better place to have a good race than the very first one of the year.  It sets the tone and gives the guys confidence and after we go away a good memory, which is nice to have too.  So far so good for us, however, all the stuff that counts is what’s next.  Hopefully, that keeps going in the way that it has already.”
 
HOW ABOUT THE VALUE OF GETTING LOCKED IN AND THEN HAVING ALL WEEK TO CONCENTRATE ON RACE PREPARATION?
“With the new qualifying scenario I think it would be really nice for all of us to know we were in the race for Sunday.  Obviously, there is not, there are only a couple of cars extra, but it’s still a nice thing.  It’s nice to know as a team, but it’s also nice to know for your partners like GoDaddy and all the other people that are involved in the car.  That is who really pays for you to be out there on the track and have their name.  Being on the front row would lock in a front row.  Being in the top-six would lock in a start which both of those would be very good.”
 

JUAN PABLO MONTOYA, NO. 42 TARGET CHEVROLET SS – EXPERIENCED AN ENGINE FAILURE DURING PRACTICE
 
YOUR GUYS ARE GOING TO BE REALLY BUSY THIS SESSION WHAT HAPPENED?
“They are going to be really busy changing the motor.  Our Target Chevy has been pretty strong.  Jamie (McMurray) I think is second on the board right now.  We are pretty happy.  We will change the motor and give it a good go tomorrow in qualifying.  I think tonight is going to be a fun night and just looking forward to the (Daytona) 500.”
 
YOU ARE NOT LETTING THIS GET YOU DOWN AT ALL ARE YOU?
“It’s okay it’s part of racing.  It happens.  We will get it fixed and get out there.  We will be fine.”

Chevrolet Will Set the Pace at Daytona
 
For Release: February 16, 2013
 
DETROIT – The 2014 Chevrolet SS will be very busy during its Speedweeks debut, pacing all four NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races – The Sprint Unlimited, both Budweiser Duels and the Daytona 500. And, it will be one of Chevrolet’s three newest models to pace NASCAR’s races at Daytona International Speedway next weekend:
 
·         2014 Chevrolet SS in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series
·         2013 Camaro ZL1 in the NASCAR Nationwide Series Drive4COPD 300
·         2014 Silverado 1500 Crew Cab in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series NextEra Energy 250
 
“Chevrolet is extremely proud to be a part of NASCAR’s season-opener by pacing all of the events at Daytona International Speedway,” said Jeff Chew, Marketing Manager for Chevrolet Racing. “In 2013, Chevrolet will launch 13 all-new or significantly redesigned products in North America. Included in those models is the Chevrolet SS, which race fans will get a chance to see on track when it paces The Sprint Unlimited tonight, the Budweiser Duels next Thursday, and the Daytona 500 next Sunday.”
 
The 2014 Chevrolet SS is the first rear-wheel drive performance sedan for Chevrolet since 1996.
 
The 2013 Camaro ZL1 brings supercar levels of performance and technology to the sports-car segment, featuring a 6.2-liter supercharged V-8 that produces 580 horsepower, and can go from 0-60 in 3.9 seconds.
 
The 2014 Silverado all-new EcoTec3 engines, designed specifically for trucks, provide power and torque when needed, then switches seamlessly to 4-cylinder mode to save fuel for light-load driving.
 
In 2013, Chevrolet is campaigning the Chevrolet SS in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, Camaro in the NASCAR Nationwide Series, and Silverado in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series.

CHEVROLET IS READY TO SHINE IN THE DAWN OF A NEW ERA
2013 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Previews New Chevy SS Race Car
 
DETROIT – Feb. 16, 2013 – As the excitement builds in the days leading up to the ‘Great American Race’ at Daytona International Speedway, Chevrolet is anxiously awaiting the beginning of a new era for the 2013 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. It’s the start of a new tradition. It’s a new season with new livery. It’s a time when NASCAR leaves behind the old and embraces the new. It announces the birth of the innovative and stylish ‘Generation Six’ race cars on-track, and in competition.
 
When the action at Daytona Speedweeks begins with the pre-season Sprint Unlimited exhibition race on Saturday, February 16, and then the 55th running of the prestigious Daytona 500 on Sunday, February 24, 2013, it will be the first time for race fans around the world to see the all-new Chevrolet SS in competition.  It’s sharp. It’s distinctive. It’s recognizable. It’s familiar. It shouts ‘Chevrolet’ from nose to tail.  Even better, it’s powered by a fuel-injected V-8.  It has rear-wheel drive. And, it features high-performance driving dynamics. To top it off, it sports an uncanny resemblance to its brand new Chevrolet SS brethren, soon to be available in dealerships around the country.
 
From the enhancement use of a Bio Fuel Blend in 2011, to the implementation of Electronic Fuel Injection in 2012, to the introduction of highly distinguished Brand Identity in 2013, NASCAR has incorporated the steps necessary to enable the Gen 6 race car to emerge with rivalries intensified more than ever.  And now, it’s all about bringing the ‘stock’ back to stock car racing.
 
“We’ve been working with our engineers and Chevy teams on the development process of this new car for quite some time, and it has finally become a reality,” said Pat Suhy, Chevrolet Racing NASCAR Group Manager. “We’ve made substantial design changes that we think are a pretty good expression of the Chevrolet SS production car. Our primary goal was to make the new Chevy SS have as many characteristics of its street version as possible.
 
“It’s fast, it has the aerodynamic qualities we need on the race track; and it also has room for our Team Chevy engineers and crew chiefs to make changes. Unlike last year’s Gen 5 Impala, this model gives them flexibility.  We hope the fans will applaud our Chevy SS race car as much as we do, and as much as our Team Chevy drivers do.”
 
Team Chevy has ample talent and on-track driver expertise to extend the winning success of Chevrolet in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. Hot on the heels of a strong 2012 season, where the Bowtie Brigade collected its 700th Sprint Cup victory and swept all three NASCAR National Touring Series Manufacturers’ Cup championships for the fourth time, Chevrolet is ready to race.
 
The 2013 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season-opener at the Daytona 500 features an impressive list of Team Chevy contenders to vie for the coveted honors.
 
2013 TEAM CHEVY LINE-UP (17 Drivers):
 
HENDRICK MOTORSPORTS (HMS)
No. 5 Kasey Kahne, Farmers Insurance Chevrolet SS / Kenny Francis, Crew Chief
No. 24 Jeff Gordon, Drive to End Hunger Chevrolet SS / Alan Gustafson, Crew Chief
No. 48 Jimmie Johnson, Lowe’s Chevrolet SS / Chad Knaus, Crew Chief
No. 88 Dale Earnhardt Jr., National Guard Chevrolet SS / Steve Letarte, Crew Chief
 
RICHARD CHILDRESS RACING (RCR)
No. 27 Paul Menard, Menards Chevrolet SS / Slugger Labbe, Crew Chief
No. 29 Kevin Harvick, Budweiser Chevrolet SS / Gil Martin, Crew Chief
No. 31 Jeff Burton, Caterpillar Chevrolet SS / Luke Lambert, Crew Chief
No. 33 Austin Dillon, Honey Nut Cheerios Chevrolet SS/ Scott Naset, Crew Chief
 
STEWART-HAAS RACING (SHR)
No. 10 Danica Patrick, GoDaddy.com Chevrolet SS / Tony Gibson, Crew Chief
No. 14 Tony Stewart, Bass Pro Shops Chevrolet SS / Steve Addington, Crew Chief
No. 39 Ryan Newman, Quicken Loans Chevrolet SS / Matt Borland, Crew Chief
 
EARNHARDT GANASSI RACING (EGR)
No. 1 Jamie McMurray, McDonald’s Chevrolet SS / Kevin Manion, Crew Chief
No. 42 Juan Pablo Montoya, Target Chevrolet SS / Chris Heroy, Crew Chief
 
FURNITURE ROW RACING (FRR)
No. 78 Kurt Busch, Furniture Row Racing Chevrolet SS / Todd Berrier, Crew Chief
 
TOMMY BALDWIN RACING (TBR)
No. 7 Dave Blaney, Florida Lottery Chevrolet SS / Tommy Baldwin Jr., Crew Chief
No. 36 J.J. Yeley, Golden Corral Chevrolet SS / TBD, Crew Chief
 
JAMES FINCH PHOENIX RACING (PXR)
No. 51 Regan Smith, Guy Roofing Chevrolet SS / Nick Harrison, Crew Chief

NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
MEDIA DAY
DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT
FEBRUARY 14, 2013
 
 
TONY STEWART, NO. 14 BASS PRO SHOPS CHEVROLET SS met with media and discussed the new race cars, why the Daytona 500 is so tough to win, bump-drafting, and more. Full Transcript:
 
Q.        Probably been asked a thousand times, but the discernible difference for you when you got behind the wheel of the new car, what was that like for you?
TONY STEWART:  I ran a day and a half at the tire test at Phoenix and we didn’t even have a steel body car, it was a fiberglass bodied car.  Didn’t really notice a lot.
We had the one day at Charlotte.  That was probably a bigger understanding of what we got than what we learned at Phoenix.
The car’s got a lot of downforce so far.  A little easier to drive.  For a new car to come out in that short amount of time, for it to drive that well, that’s a pretty big feather in NASCAR’s cap to have a car that drives that stable.
 
Q.        Some guys say it allows drivers to attack.
TONY STEWART:  You’re able to be a lot more aggressive with it.  I’m not sure you have to have as much finesse with it.
I think it’s going to give more drivers an opportunity to run a lot better with it because, like I say, it’s got a lot of downforce and a lot of side force.  It will definitely catch mistakes that they make.
 
Q.        You’ve had a tremendous amount of success, won 18 races here, but not the 500.  A lot of great drivers have never won the 500.  Why is it such a tough race to win?
TONY STEWART:  I think SPEED had a special going on last week about guys that hadn’t won it.  I saw three or four clips of races where I remember we had a shot and let it get away from us.
Everything has to go right.  The Indy 500 is the same way.  It’s easy to compare those two because everything has to go right that whole day.  You don’t normally get the opportunity to have a mistake and come back from it.  It just seems like it’s hard to make up from a mistake.
You look at the guys that normally have that trophy at the end of the day, they’re guys that had no drama at all during their race.  It’s one that you just can’t afford to make a mistake.
 
Q.        Because of that is it harder to get a feel on whether your car is really good, who could be a favorite, because there’s so many variables going on?
TONY STEWART:  Yeah.  I think by the time you get to the qualifying races, you have a good idea of who the players are.  The difference is by the time you put both groups together for the race, groups get separated and make new groups, there’s partnerships that don’t happen in the qualifying races that come up in the 500.  Now a group of three or four groups may turn into six or eight groups that have the potential to get up there, at least in the past.
It makes it hard to predict because you don’t totally know.  Even guys that have had good racecars have got held up in the back of the pack with less than 10 laps to go and they just can’t get through.  It’s hard to know where to be at the right time and hope you haven’t gotten yourself in a predicament in a spot that you can’t get out of.
 
Q.        Is it fair to say it’s a combination of a science project and the luck of a casino?
TONY STEWART:  That’s the most educated way I’ve ever heard it been put.  It is exactly that way.  You do everything in your power to take care of the science or technology side, do everything you can to build the fastest car you’ve got.  Then if you don’t have the luck to go with it.  Even if you don’t have any drama with getting the car touched, nothing happens to the car, if you’re just in the wrong spot at the wrong time at the end, it can take you out of the opportunity to take the best racecar in the field and a chance not to get through.  It is exactly that combination.
 
Q.        Any other races than Indy that approach that?
TONY STEWART:  Not that I’ve ever been a part of.  Those two races, the drama that’s involved in those two, the pressure that you put on yourself, I’ve never had any other race like it.
Not any championship race or anything.  If you go to Daytona and Indy, there’s just something about running those two races that you don’t get anywhere else.  You don’t have that emotion.  That’s part of the equation that doesn’t get factored into the other races because it just doesn’t exist like it does here and Indy.
 
Q.        Danica was talking about Indy and stockcar racing.  She said, I really have fun in the stock cars.  Do you understand why?
TONY STEWART:  No, but I’ll ask her about it.  I’m definitely going to find out why she said that.
 
Q.        She said it was more nerve-wracking in the IndyCars because of the nature of the racing.
TONY STEWART:  Well, yeah.  I think probably, you know, the course of a stockcar race, you’re not pushing 100% for 100% of the race.  Where an IndyCar race, everything is so fine and minute.  I understand it ’cause I drove them.  The passing opportunities are a lot less than what you have at a Cup race, a lot less pit stops.  All of that puts each stint of that race at higher importance.
Our races are longer.  You’re going to have more opportunity to pit, more opportunity to think about your car than you are thinking about pit strategies and all that during the race.
Other than that, I’m not sure exactly what she’s talking about, but I would assume that’s what it is.
 
Q.        What makes Ricky Stenhouse a good driver?
TONY STEWART:  I got a lot of racecar frames in my lake that have his name on them or cars that he crashed.
But the thing about Ricky that was good about him from the start was he was always fast.  It didn’t matter whether it was the Sprint car, the Midgets, the Silver Crown car, all three cars he got in and was quick right away.  The hardest part was pulling the reins back in on him.  There were races he’d have half a lap lead on second place and crash the car with 10 laps to go.  That was the hard stuff to get him to understand, is you don’t have to go 100% every lap.  That’s stuff that he’s learned in the last couple years in Nationwide, is how to take his aggressive style and at the same time be smart about it, make it work to his advantage.
 
Q.        It seems like you may have a kindred spirit in Kyle Larson.  Both of you share an appetite for racing.  He wins this championship on the last lap of the last race.  What do you see in him that reminds you of you?
TONY STEWART:  I think he reminds me of a lot better than me.  Everything he’s got, I mean everything.  Even when he got in a stockcar the first time, it was just natural to him.  Go from lightweight car to a heavy car is a hard adjustment for a lot of drivers.  It’s a lot easier to go from a heavier car to a lighter car.
To watch him run his first couple races in a stockcar, that’s what shows you this kid just has natural driving ability.  He’s just good in whatever he gets in.
 
Q.        Last fall at New Hampshire, wins a race.  You send him to Eldora, he wins there.  Is that symbolic of what he can do, his potential?
TONY STEWART:  Yeah, absolutely.  I mean, the hard part of that day for us is we throw him on the jet.&nbsp
; He goes up and wins in somebody else’s midget, crashes in somebody else’s Sprint car, and he’s supposed to start on the pole in my Silver Crown car.  Never got the chance to do it because he crashed the Sprint car and got hurt.
It does, it shows how versatile he is.  He’s the kind of guy, I’ve been around a lot of wing Sprint car races, I don’t think he ran a lot of that, but he ran a lot of non-wing races.  The wing races we’d go to, you would watch how quick he adapts to it.  It amazes you how good he is.
 
Q.        Is he the next generation type star?
TONY STEWART:  Yeah.  You can bet the farm on it.  I guarantee it.  If not, you can take everything I own because I’m that confident.
 
Q.        Pretty stout prediction.
TONY STEWART:  It’s not a matter of if, it’s when.
 
Q.        Is he just smart?  Pretty intelligent for his age.
TONY STEWART:  I don’t know how smart he is, I just know he’s good.  I mean, you watch him, in between racing, he’ll be playing video games on his phone.  He just naturally gets in it and he’s fast.  He just has that ability.
The great thing is he’s still a kid and he still acts like a kid.  Nobody’s tried to make him grow up too fast, put pressure on him to do anything.  He just gets in and does it.  That’s something that I don’t see there being any red flags with him.  I’ve seen good drivers in the past that have come up and you see red flags, you see problems or hurdles they’re going to have to cross in their career.  He doesn’t have any of those signs.
 
Q.        The elephant in the room, Danica and Ricky dating.  Is it an issue for you at all?
TONY STEWART:  Why would it be?
 
Q.        I don’t know.  They could on track…
TONY STEWART:  I had a run-in with Matt Kenseth, but I’m not dating him, so…  I still don’t see the relevancy in it.
 
Q.        Racing is about give-and-take.  Relationships could play a part in whether you give somebody an inch, who you might push at the end of a race.  That’s the way we perceive it.
TONY STEWART:  Okay, we’ll move on to the next thing (laughter).  God.  We’re at Daytona and this is the stuff we’re talking about at Daytona.  Amazing.
 
Q.        Years ago you were outspoken one way to end bump-draft is making sure the bumpers don’t line up.  Do you feel that’s been accomplished with this car?
TONY STEWART:  I don’t know.  We’ve only seen one guy try it so far, it didn’t end up very well.  I doubt that’s the last time we’ll see it tried.  I’ll say by Thursday we’ll have a really clear idea if that’s going to be possible or not.
 
Q.        Is it a step in the right direction to get away from that type of racing?
TONY STEWART:  I mean, it’s a theory.  Like I say, I think having Saturday and Thursday night’s races is good.  The logic, if you push a guy, it picks the guy up and wrecks him, doesn’t make guys want to do that much if that’s the end result.
 
Q.        How will that affect practice?
TONY STEWART:  You’ll see somebody try it.  Somebody’s bound to try it again.  Just ’cause it didn’t work the first time doesn’t mean somebody else isn’t going to try it.  I will say at some point during practice somebody will try it.  It may just be on the straightaway at first, but somebody’s going to try it to see if they can make it work.  If one makes it work, everybody is going to figure out how to do it.
 
Q.        You’re not going to be the guy to try it first?
TONY STEWART:  I’m too old to be the first guy to try anything now.  So I’ll anxiously wait for the crew chief to say, Yeah, that just happened and we’re going to have to figure it out.
 
Q.        Almost like a test pilot mentality?
TONY STEWART:  I would assume that’s what it’s going to be like.  Somebody’s going to have the nerve to try it, be impatient and try it.  That’s when we’ll have the answer.
 
Q.        (No microphone.)
TONY STEWART:  I think you got to go out and at least see what’s going on.  You got to see how the car is going to react.  You’re going to have to see mostly how it sucks up and how when you get there how it pushes a guy without physically touching the bumper.
We’ve always talked about air being like a spring between the cars and that’s still in play.  I think you’re still going to have to go out there and physically figure that out, figure out what you have to do, what you can and can’t get away with.
 
Q.        Do you still have those sponsorships?
TONY STEWART:  Yes.
 
Q.        As an owner, is finding the right sponsor one of the hardest things?
TONY STEWART:  It depends on which aspect you’re asking.  There’s a lot of different aspects.  Financing the team is one thing.  Finding the right personnel is one thing.  The right teammates.  There’s so many variables.  It’s one of many variables that compiles into making a successful race team.
The funding is a huge part of that.  Funding is a big result of a lot of those other things happening, but still just one of those pieces of the puzzle.  You can have the best finance team in the series.  If they don’t know how to apply it, it doesn’t matter.
There’s teams that have taken less money and gotten better results out of it because they know how to use the money, where to put it, have gotten the right results.
 
Q.        How much of a frustration has it been with all the changes that have happened with the cars?
TONY STEWART:  I think it’s expected.  The history of the sport, there’s always been changes, real changes.  The frustration this winter was trying to build racecars and not being able to get the parts we needed to build racecars.  That’s got a lot of teams in a bind here for the first probably five or six weeks I would say.
As far as going through the changes, I mean, for us as car owners, if it’s better for the sport, it’s well worth the investment.  It will come back eventually.
You don’t look at it as it’s money wasted if it’s a good thing for the sport and makes it better for everybody.
 
Q.        Roger Penske is giving AJ Allmendinger another chance in an IndyCar.  How do you expect that test to go?
TONY STEWART:  I haven’t been in an IndyCar for 11 years really.  I honestly don’t know.  AJ hasn’t been out of them that long.  I honestly think he’ll pick it right back up is my gut feeling.  It’s a hunch.  But I think he’ll pick it right back up.
I think if he can pick it up in those early races, he can be ready for Indy no problem.
 
Q.        What do you think of Roger’s loyalty to him?  Many would have passed on him.
TONY STEWART:  I said last fall when they reinstated him, he’s the perfect pick right now.  Roger is a smart business guy.  He’s not dumb.  He has always been loyal to his drivers.
I think this just shows how deep that loyalty really goes.
 
Q.        You have three Cup drivers that are going to run a half marathon before their qualifying on Sunday.  Does that give drivers an adva
ntage to be in that kind of shape to do that?
TONY STEWART:  Do you anticipate me running any marathons anytime soon?  In case you didn’t know, we won the championship two years ago.  I don’t think a lot has changed since then.
 
Q.        If you told Earnhardt and them back in the days you’re going to have drivers running half marathons, what do you think they’d say?
TONY STEWART:  Nobody would have said anything because nobody would have thought about that question.  I don’t think it matters.  Unless you got to get out and push the car, it’s a different deal.  Nobody is having to get out and push these things.
I don’t even know where to go with this.  It’s like people live in Alaska.  They’re used to living in the cold.  People that live in Arizona, they get used to being in the heat.  They don’t have to work out to do either one of them.  You get acclimated to it and do it.  Running a marathon or not running a marathon doesn’t make an ounce of difference.
That’s all I got on it.
 
Q.        You here about the generation six.  Are you hearing from Chevrolet or other manufacturers, saying Chevrolet instead of referring to it as the generation six?
TONY STEWART:  I think as a whole that’s why everybody is talking about it as the gen six.  As we get in our individual cars, I think you’ll hear less about it being called a gen six.  You’ll hear as the season starts here the teams and drivers will do a good job of separating the brand identity.
 
Q.        When you talked about Ricky, him being fast, rein him in, how difficult is it to take somebody and make them understand that’s not the best way?
TONY STEWART:  It’s easier to pull them back than it is to try to make them fast.
 
Q.        How easy is it to pull them back?
TONY STEWART:  I mean, the guys that get it, they figure it out with some guidance.  There’s guys that I race with still that still have that mentality.  They’ll win one every now and then, but they can’t put a string of them together and can’t win a championship.  There’s some that get it and some that don’t.  That’s why you got guys that are champions and guys that aren’t.
 
Q.        Is it important that you realize that?
TONY STEWART:  With him?
 
Q.        Personally.
TONY STEWART:  I had help just like everybody else.  I had a guy explain to me how slowing down would make me go faster.  I’m like, Are you kidding me?  Didn’t make sense to me either.  It’s like the first time you do it, feel it, it’s like the light switch kicks on and you understand.
 
Q.        When you move up, is it big awakening to move up to Cup, even if you’re a great Nationwide driver?
TONY STEWART:  The competition level is the biggest thing from going from Nationwide to the Cup Series.  The Nationwide cars always seem to drive a little bit better than the Cup cars anyway.  That inherently is part of it.
At the same time the biggest thing is you’ve got a lot, you hate to say it, not taking anything away running in the Truck Series or the Nationwide Series, but you’re running with the best of the best when you get to this level.
It’s tough in the Truck Series.  It’s a little bit tougher in the Nationwide Series.  It’s real tough when you get to the Cup Series.  You have more guys that consistently have a shot to win the race every week.
 
Q.        It took Darrell Waltrip a long time to win, and others.  Do you find any solace in knowing there are legends that took so long to win?
TONY STEWART:  You can look at it that way, or you can look at guys like Rusty and Mark Martin that have never won it, never have won it.  You never say, Well, it’s okay because of.  There’s still that opportunity that it couldn’t happen, that it might not happen.
You approach each year with the attitude of doing everything you can to win it.  If it doesn’t happen, the only thing you can say is you have to wait 365 days to do it again.  That’s the reality of it.  That’s what makes the plane ride home suck.  There’s nothing you can do about it.  You can go win the race the next week somewhere else, but it’s not the Daytona 500.  Once you start this first race, once the first race of the year is over, you either accomplished the goal or you got to wait a whole year to do it again.
 
Q.        Feels the same in the brief time you did Indy?
TONY STEWART:  Felt like you got mule kicked and nothing you could do for a year.  Sit there and think about what you did wrong, what you could have done different.  It’s a miserable feeling waiting, feeling like you have to wait the whole calendar year to get that opportunity again.
 
Q.        (Question regarding Brad Keselowski.)
TONY STEWART:  Well, I think in his case, I think his demeanor is one that is not going to be a bother to him.  I don’t think like he’s going to feel that pressure that weight.
Brad is pretty good about kind of doing things his own way, having his own identity.  I don’t feel like that’s really going to be anything that weighs on him at all.  I think he’s a guy that’s not going to look at the past as much as he’s going to look at the future.
 
Q.        In terms of him being a good champion, what constitutes a good champion?
TONY STEWART:  Kerry, what constitutes a good champion?  You have to deal with them.
KERRY THARP:  I like a guy who wins and enjoys winning and enjoys being the champion.  You fit that mold.
 
TONY STEWART:  On Keselowski’s side, I don’t know.  I assume he likes to win races.  I don’t know anybody that likes winning more than he does.  I think a good champion is a guy that does it his way, not somebody else’s way, too.  For sure he does that.
 
Q.        Who doesn’t enjoy being the champion?
TONY STEWART:  I haven’t seen anybody yet.
 
Q.        I watched this on YouTube after the Talladega spring race.  That was a masterpiece of sarcasm.
TONY STEWART:  No, where is David Newton when somebody actually calls a spade a spade here and calls it right.  The dumb guy that asks the marathon question, you need to go down there and tell him.  That’s the highest form of flattery, what you just told me.
 
Q.        Are you proud of being so sarcastic?  Where did you find this talent?
TONY STEWART:  I’ll be honest, it just came to me one day.  I think I was born with it.  I take a lot of pride in the fact that I feel I’m probably the most successful driver at being extremely sarcastic.
 
Q.        (No microphone.)
TONY STEWART:  Oh, no.  You are the closest thing to making me lose it because I was looking at you the whole time and you had a bigger shot at losing it.  That was the only shot I had at losing it, was watching you laugh.  I was able to put on my game face and stay true to character.
 
Q.        Don’t shoot the messenger.  Do you think it helps Danica, because of her high profile, she’s always been used to dealing with extra media, that because there is a lot of talk about her and Ricky, it’s not as big a deal to her because she’s used to already having to answer all these other questions all the
time?
TONY STEWART:  I would tend to agree.  I would say it’s less of a distraction to her because she has to deal with media, a high amount of media, every week.  I don’t think this is anything that will be any distraction to her whatsoever.  Logical question. 
 
 

NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
SPEEDWEEKS MEDIA DAY
DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT
FEBRUARY 14, 2013
 
KASEY KAHNE, NO. 5 FARMERS INSURANCE CHEVROLET SS, met with members of the media and discussed competing in triathlon’s, last year’s Daytona 500 and other topics.  Partial Transcript:
 
DOES IT (COMPETING IN TRIATHLON’S) GIVE YOU A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE  OVER GUYS THAT DON’T DO IT AS MUCH?
“I don’t know.  There is no way it hurts to do this other stuff and to be in really good shape. To take care of yourself and push to run a ½ marathon as fast as you can or a sprint tri or whatever it may be.  There is no way that stuff hurts you when you are in the race car.  Does it help?  I don’t know how much it helps because Smoke (Tony Stewart) is about as good as they get and he doesn’t do that stuff.  For me personally it helps me.”
 
INAUDIBLE
“I don’t know I haven’t talked to him about it.  If he is that is really good. I originally when I signed up to do it, I wanted to do under an hour and 35 minutes so that is a lot higher than 650, but I’m in a lot better shape now than I thought I would be.  So, we will see kind of where I’m at I don’t know.”
 
DO YOU GET BUTTERFLIES BEFORE A RACE?  HOW DO YOU HANDLE THAT?
“I get a little bit jittery just because I would say more the excitement and the feeling of just wanting to go the anticipation of qualifying or the race or even practice.  It’s like two minutes until practice starts and it’s like ‘man just let us go early, I just want to get on the track.’ So, I get some nervous more anxiety like excitement more than anything.  I think that is one of the things that I strive for to.  I enjoy that and kind of like that side of things.  I like it when you feel that pressure and stuff.  It’s a good thing.”
 
IS IT MORE FOR DAYTONA?
“Not really.  I know right now kind of what is ahead of me.  Other tracks things happen and they just happen and they happen quick.  But, Daytona you pretty much know what is going to happen here.  Hopefully, you avoid it.  It’s tough to say with this place just a lot of the same stuff every time we come.”
 
LAST YEAR’S RACE HERE WAS SO CRAZY WITH FIRE AND THE RAIN IS THERE ONE THING THAT STICKS OUT IN YOUR MIND ABOUT LAST YEAR HERE?
“I just thought all the rain on Sunday to put us to Monday night, just how long and drawn out the weekend was.  I didn’t care for the racing at all last year myself.  I ran in line for three-quarters of that race and couldn’t do anything.  You pull out and lose spots so to me it was just horrible the whole package that we had last year with that car at the Daytona 500 was terrible and I’m glad that they have made big improvements for the season.  I think it will be much more exciting fun race to be a part of for not just the drivers but the fans and everybody that is watching.”
 
WE NOTICED YOU GOT A HAIRCUT SINCE WE LAST SAW YOU…
“I needed a haircut before I came down here so I just trimmed it up.”
 
WHY NOT STAY WITH THE OTHER… WHAT WAS IT CALLED?
“I don’t know what that was called, but I don’t know maybe I will bring it back later in the season.  I liked it myself.  About 65 percent of people didn’t 35 did.  I liked it maybe it will come back again some other time (laughs).”
 
AS A DRIVER DOES IT GET TO YOU WHEN PEOPLE ASK MORE PERSONAL QUESTIONS RATHER THAN COME IN HERE ON A DAY LIKE TODAY AND ASK ABOUT RACING?
“It’s hard to ask too many racing questions we are kind of clueless to some of the things that are getting ready to happen this season other than the testing we have done which has been great for the new Chevy SS.  The Gen-6 car is much better than what we have had.  I am definitely looking forward to that.  It doesn’t bother me too much any of the questions.”
 
ARE PEOPLE GOING TO BE A LITTLE BIT MORE CONSERVATIVE ON SATURDAY NIGHT THAN IN THE PAST BECAUSE OF PERHAPS SOME CAR SHORTAGES?
“They may be at times, but I think when it comes to the end of the race it can still take half the cars.  It’s tough, but I know that there is definitely a shortage of cars right now.  I could see a little bit more conservativeness in the Sprint Unlimited, definitely in practice for the Unlimited.  There may not even be an Unlimited practice because nobody, we can’t lose a car.  We lost that one at the test which you don’t expect that so we need to make it through.”
 
HAVE YOU NOTICED A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE THREE MANUFACTURERS WITH THIS NEW CAR YET? 
“There are a few differences here with pushing and being close to the car in front of you with the way that the front ends are on the cars.  But that is the only place that is the biggest deal I felt other than that just seeing times and stuff it is just kind of whoever is figuring things out was running good times at Charlotte.  I don’t think it necessarily matter which manufacturer as much as what the teams were doing and the drivers and things.   I have felt like our Chevy SS is really good.  Every time I’ve been in it since January of last season was the first time I got in it and it was great.”
 
DO YOU WANT FOR ANYTHING AT HENDRICK MOTORSPORTS? AS A DRIVER IS IT EVERYTHING THAT YOU COULD HAVE EVER WISHED FOR IS IT THERE?
“Yeah, I have more than I ever wished for.”
 
WHAT HAS THE LAST YEAR BEEN LIKE FOR YOU?
“It’s been way more to me just less worries.  You don’t have to worry about so many things. Just worry about yourself, worry about communicating and the team and how we can all pull together and win.  Because we have everything it takes to win it is sitting there.  I get to drive it every week.  How we make it go around the track right and if I do my job.  As a driver you don’t get that very often.  Those are the things with my Sprint car teams I try as hard as I can to make sure they have that opportunity the guys that work there and drive for us have the opportunity.  Mr. H (Hendrick) gives all of us that opportunity.  There is nothing I have even asked for because there is more than enough.”
 
HAVE YOU LEARNED THINGS AT HENDRICK THAT YOU CAN BRING OVER TO YOUR SPRINT CAR TEAM?
“Procedurally it’s so much different it’s just so big compared to our deal.  We have three people per team so it’s a much smaller scale.  I think since I started with Ray Evernham, Rick Hendrick now and different people that I have worked with over time.  I’m always trying to listen and learn so that maybe we can apply that to our Sprint car teams or to the people.  There are just different ways that they do it.  So I try to pay attention to that and learn from it.  It all is really good.  It is things they have taken over time and been able to win championships with.  It’s all neat things you can take.”
 
WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE A CUP OWNER SOMEDAY?
“I don’t think so.  I don’t know.  You never know what might happen in the future, but as of right now I really enjoy owning three Sprint car teams and racing Saturday’s, Sunday’s running my Sprint cars when I can and just being a driver.  That is really what I enjoy.  10 years from now, you never know, tough to say.   I like racing so much I need to be part of it for a long time.”
 
IS THERE ANYTHING THAT YOU AND KENNY FRANCIS (CREW CHIEF) DON’T KNOW ABOUT EACH OTHER?  IS THERE ANYTHING THAT WOULD SURPRISE YOU AT THIS POINT?
“I don’t think so.  We go to lunch we do different things together and are pretty much on the same page.  We had lunch the other day and just kind of went over things that we had
talked about at the start of the off season and kind of where we are at.  Just all good stuff, there is no one else I want to work with.  I think he feels the same way right now.  That is where we are at.  I think we both feel that we have got a team surrounding us that it is capable of doing a lot this season.”
 
WHAT DOES MR. H (HENDRICK) SAY ABOUT YOUR SPRINT CAR ACTIVITIES?
“He likes it.  He asks me about it and asks how things are going.”
 

NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
MEDIA DAY
DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT
FEBRUARY 14, 2013
 
JEFF BURTON, NO. 31 CATERPILLAR CHEVROLET SS, met with the media and discussed baseline testing and other topics.
 
NASCAR TOLD US THEY SUGGESTED TO THE DRIVERS THAT THEY MIGHT WANT TO GET A BASELINE IMPACT TEST, WHICH COULD BE MANDATORY IN 2014. ARE YOU PLANNING ON DOING THAT? “I haven’t done it yet. I’m investigating it and getting all the information that I feel like I need to get. Trying to get educated on it. I think it is a good idea. But, the fundamentals of it are a good idea. I want to know the specifics of it. I haven’t done it yet, but I have started doing research on it. I just want to know all the facts before I commit to doing it.”
 
WHAT WOULD CAUSE YOU TO HESITATE DOING IT? “The interpretation to the results I think is everybody’s concern. I think nobody wants to drive in a condition they shouldn’t drive it, but I think we all feel like we are our own best judge to determine if we should drive or not, from an ability standpoint. So the interpretation of the results I think is the biggest concern, I don’t want to speak for anybody else, but I think that is the biggest concern. I don’t think anybody in here wants to drive in a condition that puts somebody else in danger, or puts themselves in larger danger. That part of it is good. But how they implement it; how it is judged; how it is scored – all those things – are to me, specifics that I want to understand.”
 
YOU WANT TO BE CONFIDENT THAT IF THEY ARE GOING TO SIT YOU, THEY HAVE A GOOD REASON TO DO SO. “Yes, and I think that I don’t have this belief in that NASCAR wants to sit a driver down just for the fun of it. I don’t think that they would do something except only in the incident that there is no other choice. But then again, it is a mechanism that could be used to make a decision. I want to understand exactly how it is used. I’m gathering that data. I’m not opposed to doing it. I was to understand how it all works before I commit to doing it.”
 
DO YOU THINK RICKY STENHOUSE, JR. AND DANICA PATRICK CAN RACE EACH OTHER JUST LIKE YOU WOULD ANYONE ELSE? “I think that’s a valid point. I think they are both racers. I have people that I race with that I have relationships with. Not that kind of a relationship, but I think an awful lot of. I race them, and they race me. We find a way to make that work. They will to. I think the biggest issue is what happens if they break-up. That’s probably the biggest issue. But, listen, I just don’t see it being an issue. It may be something to talk about, but it’s not an issue.
 
“I think it is a little naïve to say it is no different, because it is different. A male/female relationship is different than two buddies. It just is. So it is naïve to say it is the same thing. But I think that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. That they can’t go race. But it is different than two buddies racing against each other.”

NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
MEDIA DAY
DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT
FEBRUARY 14, 2013
 
 
KEVIN HARVICK, NO. 29 BUDWEISER CHEVROLET SS met with media and discussed the off-season, racing at Daytona, what the Budweiser sponsorship means to him, some of his favorite trophies, high school wrestling, and more. FULL TRANSCRIPT:
 
Q.        (No microphone.)
KEVIN HARVICK:  It feels good.  To be able to get through the winter, be able to relax, not have any new race teams or anything to worry about makes it nice.  You get to enjoy your time off and get ready to go.
 
Q.        (No microphone.)
KEVIN HARVICK:  Yeah, you know, you kind of get into a routine.  You’re still pretty busy during the week, for the most part, except for around Christmas, to do your photo shoots, production days, stuff like that.  Anytime you can sleep in your own bed, which is most of the time during the winter, I call that time off.
 
Q.        (No microphone.)
KEVIN HARVICK:  In relative terms, I guess.  But, you know, for me it was important to spend some time at home with my son and be able to help DeLana and I enjoyed that as well.
 
Q.        (No microphone.)
KEVIN HARVICK:  Time at the Super Bowl was very short.  We went on Saturday afternoon and were able to take in a couple meals and went to the game and enjoyed it.  It was a good game.  Obviously I wish the 49ers would have won.  All in all, it was good.
 
Q.        Do you still get butterflies coming into Daytona?
KEVIN HARVICK:  Yeah, I think this race is different than most races.  You come into this race excited just because it’s a new season, a lot of optimism.  Just getting back into the swing of things.  Once you get into the grind, you get towards the end of the season, you can get wore down, especially if things aren’t going well.
To be able to get back down here, get back in the swing, definitely brings a lot of enthusiasm and excitement.  I’m pumped up and ready to go.
 
Q.        Growing up, what is your first recollection about racing?
KEVIN HARVICK:  I was around racing from pretty early in my life.  Most of my moments came from Mesa, Phoenix, those types of places, watching guys like Rick Corelli, Hornaday, Mike Chase, all the guys from the West Coast.  Those are the guys I grew up watching race.
Every once in a while you’d see a Joe Ruttman or a Davey Allison, Rick Mears, George Snider, some of those guys come in.  We grew up in Bakersfield, California, so a pretty supportive racing town.
 
Q.        (No microphone.)
KEVIN HARVICK:  The track has changed.  This is the second style of car we raced since then.  Been a lot of changes.
Anytime you’re at home and you walk past that trophy, you realize the magnitude of the race that the Daytona 500 is, being able to experience that, is something you want to experience again.
So hopefully this will be a good year to do it.
 
Q.        (No microphone.)
KEVIN HARVICK:  Yeah, there’s obviously different challenges, but I think there’s still always an extreme amount of challenges as you go through the week.  I’ve been through weeks.  I look at this race, the Daytona 500, as weeks just because of the fact that there’s so much that happens leading up to the race.  You go through the Duels.  You can have the fastest car here and wreck it.  I’ve been through weeks where you wrecked every race, get to the 500, have a great day, and the opposite of that.  You just have to maintain an even keel on the way that you approach things and be able to ready for Sunday because that’s when it all counts.
 
Q.        Do you have a special area for those trophies?  Which ones mean the most?
KEVIN HARVICK:  You never know what size they’re going to be.  Luckily the Harley Earl fits in the middle of that trophy case.  I keep all my Cup trophies at home.
 
Q.        How much effect has your family life had with your Budweiser sponsorship?
KEVIN HARVICK:  I think having my son has really helped keep a new balance on life that you didn’t really understand until you had a child.  For me, I become so emotional and so attached to what happens on the racetrack, if it’s going good, if it’s going bad.
Now you have this way of coming home and letting all those things go for two or three days, then you come back to the track and you hadn’t thought about it all week and you’re really focused at being at the racetrack.
The same kind of thing has gone for what you do off of the racetrack.  We kind of have to plan things out and trips become really more productive because they’re more well-planned out.  You have to be a little bit choosier about where you go.
Really haven’t changed a lot as far as the sponsorship goes.  We went to Chicago for the UFC fight, went to the Super Bowl.  We’ve done photo shoots, production days.  One of the biggest reasons we got rid of the race team was to balance those two.  Couldn’t do all three.  Couldn’t be dad, team owner and driver on Sunday and be successful probably at any of them.  We had to eliminate one.  That new balance adds to your life, lets you be more focused and hopefully more competitive on the weekends.
 
Q.        (Question regarding the last 10 laps.)
KEVIN HARVICK:  I think that’s kind of why for me there’s a really high anticipation of getting into Saturday night’s race, getting through the practices on Friday, just to know what you need to work on, where you need to be, what you need to do, how to run your race, really start to plan that out in your mind.
The urgency always builds as you get closer to the end of the race, for sure.  You got to kind of start taking some chances and pushing and shoving a little bit to get yourself in a position that you want to be in.
But I don’t think that’s going to change.  It’s just a matter of how that needs to play out as to where you need to be and how you need to approach getting there. 
 
Q.        (No microphone.)
KEVIN HARVICK:  Well, I think as we’ve gone through the tests, every team’s had a specific test plan, and everybody’s gone back and evolved their cars to what each thought was the best result on the track.
That’s obviously one of his big priorities, is to come in and kind of narrow down the things that need to be tried, find the answers to them without all three teams having to go down different paths to do that.
We’ll get places a lot quicker if we have three people working on it than one.
 
Q.        (No microphone.)
KEVIN HARVICK:  You know, for us at Phoenix, I think you could attribute it to that for sure.  After practice was over, we took everything out of the 27 car and put it in our car for the race and were able to adjust on it to my driving style and were able to win the race.
Definitely some parallels there as to things we did at Phoenix.
 
Q.        How does the 78 play in all this?
KEVIN HARVICK:  I think when you have somebody of the caliber of Kurt, as long as their cars stay similar to the game plan to what we have, they’re not changing ’em up as they get their hands on ’em out there, things will work a lot smoother and easier.
If you can take that from three to four people with somebody
like Kurt that is going to give good information and run up front, you’re basically looking at a four-car team.
 
Q.        You mentioned earlier going to a UFC event.  Where is your connection with that community?
KEVIN HARVICK:  Well, there’s a couple different connections.  Obviously Tapout has been a supporter of the racing program.  The Jimmy John’s sponsorship first started when we met Brock Lesnar.  Jimmy sponsored him in his fighting.  That’s probably been five years ago.  We’ve just gotten more involved in it, learned to like the sport.
 
Q.        What was it like being in a corner and what have you learned about the sport?  Have you trained any, got on the mat?
KEVIN HARVICK:  I think I’m past my training days as far as with those guys for sure.  They do it on a daily basis and make a living at it.
It’s just an intriguing sport.  There’s something about that one-on-one type of situation where the other guy just wants to rip your head off.  Being behind the scenes like that, seeing how they get prepared for the fight, seeing the anticipation they have every time they get in the ring, it’s a whole different atmosphere than what you’re used to.
 
Q.        (No microphone.)
KEVIN HARVICK:  Yeah, definitely called Donald and Brock friends for sure.  Brock has been here the last two or three years to support us during the Daytona 500.  Donald is coming down next weekend.
 
Q.        Certain mental similarities in how they prepare for a fight and you for a race?
KEVIN HARVICK:  For those guys it’s not getting so pumped up and so overdone that you spend all your energy.  For me it’s much the same.  You don’t want to get yourself over-anxious and do something dumb in the beginning of the race.  There’s a lot of similarities between the two in that aspect of it, especially getting prepared for the race like that.
 
Q.        The energy level seems to be exciting, too.
KEVIN HARVICK:  Yeah, you know, there’s just that anticipation of building up to an event in general.  The Daytona 500 for us is obviously our biggest event that we go to every year.  There’s a lot of similarities in any sport building up to the event.
 
Q.        (No microphone.)
KEVIN HARVICK:  Yeah, you know, I think I’m a very honest person.  Kind of tells it like I see it, right or wrong.  Obviously in the racecar pretty aggressive and like to drive the car every lap as hard as I can drive it.
So, you know, it’s pretty cut and dry with me.
 
Q.        (No microphone.)
KEVIN HARVICK:  I don’t know about ‘evil’.  Yeah, I guess that would be somewhat appropriate.  Depends on what day it is, how I woke up.
 
Q.        (No microphone.)
KEVIN HARVICK:  You know, everything is just so much different than what it was then.  Those guys laid a great foundation for us to come in and race.  But there’s so many sponsors and so many different things involved now, you just have to approach it a lot different.
 
Q.        (No microphone.)
KEVIN HARVICK:  It depends on what aspect of it.  I’ve worked on my own cars and put them together.  In that aspect of it I guess you could say.
In this day and age, you have to be able to adapt to not only the racing side of it but the marketing side of it with the sponsors and things that come with it.
Q.        (No microphone.)
KEVIN HARVICK:  I said it earlier.  I think it’s made me more focused because a lot of times the thought process and the thinking during the week, carrying your emotion, not being able to get away from it, being more focused when you come back, letting last week go, that was kind of hard for me to do.
I think with him, for me it’s one of those things where you can come home and let that go for a couple days and come back and really be focused on what you’re doing.
You’re not going to do anything different as far as making a pass, driving the car as fast as you can or anything like that.
 
Q.        (No microphone.)
KEVIN HARVICK:  I think that’s not going to happen from anybody.  I think most everybody here has won at every other level and division that they’ve raced in to get to this point.  So pretty much everybody here are winners and are pretty competitive in everything that they do.
 
Q.        (No microphone.)
KEVIN HARVICK:  First one was probably five years ago, a troops fight that they had.  I don’t remember exactly where it was.
 
Q.        How many have you been to?
KEVIN HARVICK:  I don’t know.  Five or six.
 
Q.        (No microphone.)
KEVIN HARVICK:  He’s out there riding around.  He’s not in a pedal car.  We had to push him.  First full weekend that he’s gone to.  He’ll be here all weekend.
 
Q.        (No microphone.)
KEVIN HARVICK:  I wouldn’t even go in.  Those guys are dangerous, man.  It’s a whole different level.
 
Q.        Do you have a best memory from going to any of those matches?
KEVIN HARVICK:  I just like competition.  Those guys, I wrestled in high school, so there’s that competition of you against yourself.  Then when you get in there for the competitive side of it in the ring, just something about being one guy against another guy.  The only person you have to blame for making a mistake is yourself.
 
Q.        (No microphone.)
KEVIN HARVICK:  Brock is a good person.  Obviously we see each other at some Jimmy John’s stuff and talk occasionally, but a good person.
 
Q.        How about Donald?  Seem to be different characters.
KEVIN HARVICK:  Oh, yeah.  Much different characters, for sure.  They both are very different people.  Donald is quite a bit younger than Brock.  He’s got a few different hobbies.  Brock likes to hunt, Donald likes to wake board.
 
Q.        Which one do you think you’re more like?  Who are you closer to?  Donald?
KEVIN HARVICK:  I’d say they both have their own different perspectives of what you like about both of them.
All right.  Thank you.

NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
MEDIA DAY
DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT
FEBRUARY 14, 2013
 
RYAN NEWMAN, NO. 39 QUICKEN LOANS CHEVROLET SS, met with media and discussed the 2013 season, having three cars at SHR and other topics.
 
TALK ABOUT EXPECTATIONS FOR THE 2013 SEASON: “For me personally, 2013 is just a matter of going out and having fun. Having fun for me is winning races, winning poles, leading laps – all those types of things, which I know I am capable of. I feel like we have the equipment to do that. With Matt Borland (crew chief) leading the group of guys, looking of forward to having fun.”
 
ARE THERE ANY SPECIFIC TRACKS YOU ARE LOOKING FORWARD TO? “I think every track I have an opportunity to win at. Some maybe more than others. My stats are always the best, for whatever reason, on short, flat tracks. But I think I am capable of getting to Victory Lane at every type of race track or race car we drive.”
 
WHAT IS THE BIGGEST CHANGE FOR YOU THIS SEASON? “The new car is the biggest change. Nobody really knows what it is going to be like exactly at every race track, or in every different situation we are going to be in. I think it is an awesome looking car. I think it is great that NASCAR and the production market has tied themselves back together from a visual standpoint. We’ll see.”
 
WHAT CHANGES DO YOU EXPECT GOING TO THREE CARS AT STEWART-HAAS? “I have used the analogy before that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and when you add a whole other third to the chain, you have the opportunity for weaker links.  As long as those links are strong, there’s no issue.”
 
DO YOU STILL GET A SPECIAL FEELING COMING INTO DAYTONA? “If we didn’t have to come here and do all this stuff (media day), it would be even more of a special charge. (LAUGHS) Absolutely! I don’t think many drivers enjoy coming and doing this, but it is a part of what we have to do for our sponsors and for our teams. It just happens to be the first race, and its grown bigger and bigger in the last 10 years I have been a part of this sport.”
 
DO YOU GET JITTERS? “I wouldn’t say jitters. There’s an emotion to it, but I wouldn’t say jitters. Not like I’m nervous. Not like I have the butterflies. Part of me is excited, but I have to control that excitement. Part of me is anticipating but I have to control that anticipation. Every driver is different. Every driver has different characteristics when it comes to that emotionally and mentally.”
 
DOES IT GO AWAY FAST WHEN YOU GET IN THE CAR? “For some people. It’s different for everybody. For me, I never have it, so it’s not an issue.”
 
WHEN YOU WERE GROWING UP, DID YOU HAVE A MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE WHEN YOU SAID YOU CAN DO THIS?  “I was 38 days old.”
 
 
WITH THE FOCUS ON HEAD INJURIES, HAVE YOU TAKEN THE TIME TO LOOK AT WHAT IS AVAILABLE AS FAR AS WHAT TESTING IS AVAILABLE, AND HOW MUCH ARE YOU A FAN OF THAT? “I guess it’s been no rocket science that an injury has more potential to be damaging to the head than any other part of the body. But, for me personally, I have not done any extra testing. I haven’t been to any labs to diagnose my neutral or zero point, or whatever you want to call it. I haven’t put much emphasis on that.”
 
DO YOU LOOK FORWARD TO MAYBE DOING SOMETHING LIKE THAT? “I’m not usually wanting to be the first one to go be the baseline when it comes to those types of things. I would rather the system be worked out a little better than what I understand it is right now.”
 
WHAT IS YOUR ULTIMATE GOAL? “To win the championship. I’ve been doing this for 10 years, and I feel like I am fully capable as a driver.  I think that there is more than 12 teams capable of winning a championship, it’s just a matter of who does. It is much more competitive than it used to be.”
 
ARE YOU RUNNING ANY NATIONWIDE THIS YEAR? “There is a chance for it, but nothing is planned as of right now.”
 

NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
MEDIA DAY
DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT
FEBRUARY 14, 2013
 
JAMIE MCMURRAY,  #1 MCDONALD’S/CESSNA AIRCRAFT CO./TEXTRON CHEVROLET, met with members of the media at Daytona International Speedway and discussed the birth of his second child, the new car, what it feels like to win the Daytona 500 and much more.  FULL TRANSCRIPT:
 
TALK A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THE 2012 SEASON AND HOW THINGS WENT FOR YOU?
WHAT DO YOU THINK ITS LOOKING LIKE FOR 2013?
“Ready for 2012 obviously to be over. I think like most teams ready to get this season started. There’s a lot of unknowns with this car. We got to have more testing in the off season than what we’ve had in the past, but I think everyone is still trying to figure out what it’s going to take to make this car quicker than the next guy. At Charlotte I was shocked at how close all the cars were from the best really to the 25th-place guy. It was a very tight group. It’s not going to take a big advantage to be seen on TV.”
 
WHAT’S THE LATEST NEWS ON YOUR NEW ARRIVAL?
“So, yeah my wife just had our second child and had a little girl this time. Our first child was a little boy. A little girl is much different. I have compared notes with other dads that have had a boy then a girl. It is a different experience. But both, Hazel is her name, Hazel and Christian are doing very well. This was a much easier experience than the last time. We’ve really enjoyed it. I was very thankful. They weren’t supposed to get to come home until today and I was really upset that I wasn’t going to be able to be the one to go pick them up. That’s a big moment as a dad, to get to wheel your wife down in a wheelchair with the baby and pick them up. I really enjoyed that last time, so I was upset that I wasn’t going to get to do it but they let her come home a day early so I got to have that moment. That was good. Last night was an experience for sure, but I have a really good wife who kind of takes that whole responsibility on. So it was nice.”
 
OBVIOUSLY WITH THE BODY CHANGES THIS YEAR, THIS IS GOING TO BE THROWING THE CREW CHIEFS A CURVE BALL, BECAUSE THE ADJUSTMENT THAT WAS MADE IF YOU WERE LOOSE LAST YEAR MIGHT BE A TOTALLY DIFFERENT ADJUSTMENT THIS YEAR. WHEN YOU WERE TESTING UP IN CHARLOTTE, DID IT SEEM LIKE THEY WERE KIND OF SCRAMBLING A LITTLE BIT OR DID THE COMMUNICATION PRETTY MUCH STAY THE SAME?
“I think some of the changes will be the same. When we did our testing it wasn’t really about what you did at the race. It was really just about testing and seeing how different pieces and different attitudes on the car, different bump styles, kind of the traditional testing. Certainly you want to make the car as fast as you can, but more than anything we didn’t have any data on the cars so it’s so nice to get to test and have data to back it up to go back to the seven-post and see if you can make your simulation program and your seven-post and actual track data all relate.”
 
DO YOU THINK THE STRATEGY IN THE FINAL LAPS OF THIS RACE IS GOING TO BE DIFFERENT WITH THIS CAR?
“I’m anxious to get on the internet in the morning and read different people’s quotes and see what other drivers have told you guys about what they expect. My gut tells me this is a survival race. I think we are going to have wrecks and I’m going to say that hoping we don’t. Based on how bad the cars drove at the test, how hard the cars were to drive at the test in a large pack, I think when we get a large pack together we’re going to have a wreck. I’m curious to what happens in the Shootout and then also in the 150. I think until we get 43 cars on the track, it’s not going to be the same. To me the key to the 500 will be survival. The last 10 laps are really a crap shoot. I heard a play back on the radio of the 500 that I won and there are so many circumstances of not just what you do but what other people do around you, the decisions they make. You go out and you drive your hardest, try to make the smartest decisions, and you hope the other people around you will make decisions that will benefit you as well. The truth of it is a lot of it when it comes down to the last lap is about you making a good decision and also people around you making a good decision that benefits you.”
 
IT ALMOST HAS TO BE A SPLIT SECOND DECISION.
“Absolutely, it seems like some guys are better at it than others. But there is a large amount of luck involved in this. I believe the guys that tell you that it’s not are just full of themselves.”
 
DO YOU THINK THERE WILL BE TANDEM?
“I don’t think there will be tandem.”
 
EVEN ON THE LAST LAP?
“I don’t know. I don’t think anyone knows. We didn’t get to do that a lot at the test down here. So, I don’t know. The Shootout is going to tell us that, when we get to the last lap of that because it seems like that race always ends under caution or a green-white-checker. So, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens. I don’t know what there will be.”
 
WHEN YOU TALK ABOUT DOWN HERE FOR THE TEST AND HOW DIFFICULT THE CARS WERE AT THAT POINT, DO YOU MEAN JUST FROM A STABILITY STANDPOINT?
“Yeah, so the last few years we were down here the reason you could do tandem is because when you’re pushing the guy, the car is just very stable, a lot of grip. Not effortless but fairly easy. When we were down here for the test, the cars seemed light in the back. We’ve got such a small spoiler on them the cars skate around a lot and you didn’t want the guy shoving you that much and I think the noses are shaped a little bit different. It’s a different experience. We might get more comfortable at that. I didn’t see anyone tandem while we were down here. First off because you can only go about half a lap anyway. The reason tandem used to work was because if you could get locked together and go about three or four laps you could go faster, but that first half of lap you spend trying to get locked together you lose so much time that you have to hope you make up a lot on the end of it. I don’t think now you are going to spend a half of lap getting locked together, and then you have to break apart immediately. It’s such a counter-productive move.”
 
DO YOU THINK THERE’S AN ASPECT OF THE CAR BEING PART OF THE STAR NOW?
“First off, I really liked what we have five years ago, real pretty car. It was real racy. They looked aerodynamic. I thought the generation five car was the ugliest car of all time. I thought it was horrible. I think this is the best looking car we’ve ever been in. I’ve been so anxious and excited to see the pictures of the different paint schemes that are coming out this year, and every paint scheme even if it’s the same one from last year on this car, it looks better. You’re like that looks great. And I think it’s cool that we have some brand identity. So, if you’re a Chevy fan you have something to pull for. Where before the cars just had different decals on them, they are actually different now which is cool.”
 
DO YOU HAVE ANY RACE DAY RITUALS THAT YOU DO? ARE YOU SUPERSITIOUS?
“No, not really. I’m a schedule person. I just like to have a schedule and the same type of schedule every weekend. I don’t like breaking. But that’s my life too. Every day that I wake up I do the same thing for the first three hours.”
 
DO YOU STAY AWAY FROM PEANUTS OR ANYTHING?
“No, Matt Kenseth does though. I don’t believe in superstitions. I think you make your own luck.”
 
WHAT WERE YOU THINKING WHEN YOU LISTENED TO THE END OF THE DAYTONA 500 THAT YOU WON?
“Actually I was listening to something on XM Radio last night and they were replaying like the last lap of the last 10 Daytona 500’s. All of them make your heart beat, and you start sweating. It’s so nerve wrecking, this kind of racing. For as boring as it is for the first p
art of the race because you are riding and trying to make it to the end, the last 10 laps, 25 laps of these are just awesome inside the car.”
 
WHAT DOES IT FEEL LIKE TO WIN THE 500?
“It’s definitely the most amazing race you can win. There’s not any other race that compares to the Daytona 500 because we’re here for so many days and there’s so much buildup to it. As a little kid, this is the race that everybody watches. Even if you are a casual NASCAR fan, you watch the Daytona 500. I’ve watched this since I was a little kid. It’s the most amazing racing moment you can have.”
 
WAS IT A RACE THAT YOU FOLLOWED AND THOUGHT, I WOULD LIKE TO BE ABLE TO WIN IT ONE DAY?
“I always wanted to race NASCAR. I tell you something else I saw on TV the other day was I think they call it the next nine, I don’t know what they are calling that group of kids but I was listening to those kids talk about how they can’t wait to make it to the Sprint Cup level and their goal is to make it to that. As a guy that’s been here for a long time, I forgot those moments. You come here and you do this, it’s your job and you work, this is what you do. I think sometimes we all forget how anxious we were and excited to get to be at this level. So I thought that was really cool to get to see those kids talk about that. I can remember being at the point and not having won the Daytona 500 at that time of my life, then you look back and you’ve won that it’s pretty fascinating.”
 
DO YOU THINK BACK TO YOUR BUSCH DAYS?
“Yeah, media day make me think back to Busch days because we used to be down here for this and then we would have four or five days off to go goof off and play and just be a guy. I was thinking about it on the way down here. Gosh I remember what we used to do down there and my wife had a baby on Monday and how much different my life is now.”
 
ON TEAM CHANGES THIS YEAR
“We’ve actually had a pretty big turnaround. Some guys are just doing a different job at the shop. Some guys have moved on. There’s quite a few new guys on the team but we’ve had two tests. We actually did one test of not really making the car faster but just changing parts at the track to get them used to working together. They’re a really good group of guys. They have good attitudes and are also quality workers.”
 
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT PROSPECTS FOR THIS YEAR?
“I think there are just too many unknowns right now to know what you’re going to have. To me, the first four or five races the cars are going to be closer than they ever have, so track position will be more important than ever. Qualifying is going to be important. I think there is a lot of unknowns. I don’t know that we know exactly what to expect from each team.”
 
DO YOU FEEL YOU’VE MADE A STEP FORWARD FROM LAST YEAR?
“It’s so different. When you say making progress we cut up all those cars and have brand new cars. The things that made those cars tick last year, I don’t think will make these. It’s going to be different. I thought that our testing in relation to the other competitors, we’ve been faster this year than what we were last year. That’s all you can really base it on because you don’t know what other guys have but our speed has been better in testing compared to last year for sure.”
 
HOW IS IT HAVING THE HENDRICK ENGINES?
“The engine deal will be interesting down here. When you come to a plate race it seems like the engine people are grouped together in qualifying and in the race, but I think at the intermediate tracks and short tracks the engine program looks pretty good. It’s really strong. It’s much more open than what the ECR was with sharing data and that’s really important to us only having two cars. When you can go look at Jimmie Johnson or Tony Stewart or whoever it is. That’s a positive for sure.”
 
GROWING UP, WHAT’S YOUR FIRST MEMORIES OF RACE CARS?
“Car or go kart?”
 
GO KART, WHEN YOU WERE A KID.
“First thing, I remember going out to the local go kart track, I was six or seven and there was a kid there about my age racing and I remember thinking how cool that was that he’s actually getting to race these karts. A year later I got a go kart for my birthday and actually ended up racing the first four or five years of racing go karts with him. We became good friends. Go karts are what I remember. Not only fun, but family fun which was really important.”
 
WAS THERE A POINT ALONG THE TIME WHERE YOU FIGURED OUT, I’VE GOT THIS?
“You know what I had was very supportive parents, but mainly a supportive father. I couldn’t do anything wrong. He always told you, you were the best so he convinced me of that. I think having somebody always telling you that you are doing the right thing, and you’re doing a good job, I had a really supportive father which was huge.”
 
SO THAT ONE BIG FAN MAKES A DIFFERENCE?
“Yeah, when you are related to me it does.”
 
HOW ARE YOU PLANNING TO CELEBRATE VALENTINE’S DAY?
“We just had a baby on Monday, so my wife is not here. She’s at home. I think that Christy and I have a little bit, not really a different relationship, but we don’t buy presents, or do flowers. I usually tell everybody that it’s Valentine’s Day every day at our house. We’re just nice to each other and we don’t have a day to celebrate it.”
 
JUST BECAME A FATHER FOR THE SECOND TIME, TELL ME ABOUT THAT.
“I forgot how special it was to be in the delivery room. The part that you forget from my take is that you watch your wife carry this baby around for 10 months, and you talk about it and when that moment comes and you get to see the baby. Even though we have crazy technology that will give you a nice ultrasound, until you actually see it you don’t know. You don’t know that all the fingers and toes are going to be there. The first time you hear your baby cry, its immediate eyes water for both of you. It’s a moment that I wish everyone got to experience.”
 
WHAT WAS THE ONE THING THAT SURPRISED YOU THE MOST ABOUT BEING A FATHER FOR THE FIRST TIME?
“That you can love something unconditionally and it can test you and make you mad and you get frustrated and then you can immediately forgive it and love it. That’s something that people tell you. You hear it and people tell you stories. Everything that everyone tells you is true. It’s also very fascinating to me that I had my daughter on Monday at 11:52 and you’re in love immediately. It’s like immediate.”
 
WHAT DO YOU DO FOR EXERCISE?
“I had a trainer at one time, a guy that did a lot of the supercross guys and that’s an extreme. When you talk about motorcross guys they are in the best shape of any I would say athlete but probably motorsports athlete. So, I had that. My body fat got to an all-time low and the eating came along with that, and the eating is the hardest part of your workout. Now I try to eat correctly and really it’s about running 45 minutes a day and I do a little bit of weight lifting, but I don’t do a lot. There’s not anything to me that you can do weightlifting that duplicates what you can do in the car so the best exercise to me other than just some good cardio to stay healthy is just kind of being in a car.”
 
WHAT’S THE FAVORITE PLACE YOU’VE EVER BEEN TOO TRAVELING?
“Italy. We actually went to Italy when Christy was pregnant with Carter in 2010 on our off weekend in August. It’s just, gosh so much different than America. Beautiful, old.”
 
WHERE IN ITALY WAS IT? “We went to Rome, Venice and Verona. It’s much different. People are not as friendly as they are in America. We grew up in the South and everyone says yes ma’am, yes sir and cater to you. Italians not so much, but scenery was beautiful.”
 
I BET THE FOOD WAS GOOD TOO. “The food was good. We live a very fast paced life. It’s hard when you get over there because there is no rush. Lunch
could take an hour and a half or two hours and that’s normal. That’s hard to get used to.”
 
WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE FOOD?
“Pasta, maybe.”

NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
MEDIA DAY
DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT
FEBRUARY 14, 2013
 
DAVE BLANEY, NO. 7 FLORIDA LOTTERY CHEVROLET SS met with media and discussed his racer son, Ryan Blaney, the status of Tommy Baldwin Racing, the new race cars, social media, and more. Full Transcript:
 
ON THE QUALIFYING CHANGE AND HOW THAT MIGHT IMPACT SOME OF THE TEAMS
“I don’t actually know where we ended up last year; it was in the top 35 somewhere last year, but it was 33rd, 34th, or 35th I believe. I’ve looked at it for down here (Daytona) and heck, a guy 15th in the points from last year could miss it, right, if there are a bunch of good cars that wreck in the Twins. A lot of weird things could happen in the Twins.”
 
DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU CAN QUALIFY PRETTY WELL HERE AND THAT’S NOT MUCH OF A CONCERN?
“Well, yeah for here, it’s all about the Twins. We’re not going to qualify on the front row.  So, we just have to concentrate more on qualifying this year. Last year, we were locked-in. So we didn’t really spend extra. We didn’t throw tires away in qualifying mode. We just didn’t do it. But we’ll have to this year. You can’t rely on provisionals. So that’ll change our plan a little bit, but that’s okay.”
 
ON THE NEW CHEVY SS RACE CAR
“We were down here a little bit for testing and we were at Charlotte for the day. I think we’re okay. I think we’re in pretty good shape right now for the first three races and that’s my team, and J.J. Yeley’s. They’ve done a good job. Parts aren’t that easy to get but we’ve got a couple of guys at the shop that are building fast. I don’t know whether that’s good, but they’re getting them ready anyway.
 
“It’s been impressive to me. At Charlotte, it was really really fast; it’s a bigger spoiler on it, but still. It was really fast and really stuck-down feeling. Hopefully the racing is good like that. Hopefully we’re not just all spread apart and running wide-open. But the looks are great, I think. The racing side of it, you just have to go race and see. And then I’m sure they’ll tweak the rules if they have to a little bit to try to make the racing better.”
 
ARE YOU SURPRISED ABOUT THE SUCCESS OF YOUR SON’S RACING SO FAR (RYAN BLANEY)?
“I’m surprised in some ways. I’m not surprised in others. I probably saw it when he was 14 years old. I could see what I thought it had what it took to keep going. But, when he got a chance in the first Nationwide race with Baldwin, obviously it went way better and he caught on to things right away. He ran in a couple of ARCA races for the Venturini Group and some K&N races for me and took off really good in a heavier car on a bigger track. And then when he got a chance with Penski and the truck for Brad, yeah, it went better than I expected, for sure. And he used his head way better than I expected for an 18 year old, 19 year-old now. So, that part was a pleasant surprise.”
 
HOW IS TOMMY BALDWIN RACING COMING ALONG?
“I think we’re in better shape than we’ve ever been, sponsorship-wise, which has enabled us to hire more people and I think have better equipment come race day. So, right now, we’re looking good. Hopefully we can be a good bit more competitive than we were.”
 
MORE ON SON RYAN BLANEY
“He wasn’t all about racing. Even when he was 10 or 12 years old, half the time he didn’t even know where I was racing that weekend. It wasn’t like he was obsessed with racing. And we were racing Quarter Midgets at that time, racing little Bandolero cars. But by the time he was 14 or 15 in there somewhere, he was pretty locked into it. He had some success in Short Track cars and his confidence was building and he was pretty locked into it then.”
 
INAUDIBLE
“I’m trying to run sprint cars this summer more than I have. I brought my own car down to Volusia County and we’re racing tonight and the rest of the week. I hope to run 15 or 20 sprint car races this summer around the Cup schedule. We’ll see.”
 
IS THAT JUST SOMETHING FOR YOU TO GO OUT AND HAVE FUN?
“Well, that’s what I grew up doing so it’s part of me forever. And I wouldn’t mind being back in that world in the near future as well; more than I am now. So, we’ll see.”
 
REGARDING TONY STEWART RUNNING FOR A CHAMPIONSHIP IN SPRINT CUP AS WELL AS RUNNING MANY SPRINT CAR RACES THIS YEAR
“He’s got enough money and enough sponsorship that he can do whatever he wants, right? (laughter). So, I’m running this Sprint Car myself and okay, I can’t go getting enough guys to do it right. I mean my race car is plenty good. But I’ll just do what I can this year. But like I said, my years here are not many left so I’d love to be able to get back into that racing I think, once it stops here.”
 
ON HIS SON, RYAN BLANEY
“He’ll be here for a long time, I hope. And so we can always come and watch that. But watching is not that much fun (laughter).
 
WHEN YOU WATCH, YOU KNOW THE GOOD PARTS. BUT YOU KNOW THERE CAN BE DANGER, TOO
“We’ll, I do. But I don’t know. That side is just a part of it that’s always there, but I can’t say that I think about it too much. We do all we can do inside the cars. I haven’t gone and looked in the Penske cars. Obviously those guys know what they’re doing. But any car he’s driven, whether it’s been mine or somebody else’s, I’ve looked it over and do all I know how to do to help him. And freak accidents happen on the highway everyday, let alone at the race track. So, you just try to do all you can do.”
 
YOU’VE BEEN GOOD ON RESTRICTOR PLATE TRACKS. IS THAT YOU OR THE CAR OR A COMBINATION? CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THAT?
“I think it’s a little bit of a combination of a lot of things. Tommy Baldwin has always has good restrictor cars. I think he understands that kind of racing really well. And we do come with good equipment. I feel like our speedway cars, our engines, are as good as what we’re racing against. So equipment-wise, I think we’re closer at those races. I don’t know if I’m a good plate racer. I think I have the respect of the really good plate racers; where I can run with them, beside them, in front of them, behind them, push them, or whatever. I think that helps when it comes down to it. Those things combined, I think, makes to where we can have a chance.”
 
DO YOU ENJOY THAT TYPE OF RACING?
“Not that much. I don’t think any drivers really enjoy it. It can be fun, but there are just so many things that can happen that are out of your control. That’s what you don’t like. But, you get to come to Daytona and race. So, that’s pretty cool.”
 
WHAT DID YOU THINK LAST YEAR WHEN THE RACE STOPPED?
“I remember I sat in my car for a long time with my helmet on. I didn’t know if it was going to be a long delay or a short delay. Baldwin was on the radio yacking about oh my gosh, we might luck into one here. So then you get out, and you’re sitting there for two hours trying to explain how in the world I’m going to explain winning this race (laughs). So, it was a strange, strange thing.”
 
WHEN YOU THINK BACK ABOUT THAT RACE, IS THAT WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT THE MOST?
“No, what sticks with me is I came to pit road too fast and blew a front tire, so that’s what I was mad about. That kind of hurt our day. But I think we finished 15th still with a beat-up car. And I was disappointed that I did that and hurt our day. But yeah, the other stuff I couldn’t control. So I was mad about that.”
 
REGARDING NASCAR’S CONCUSSION POLICY AND BASELINE TESTING
“I don’t know. It’s a concern in all sports obviously, right now. There is voluntary baseline testing, I believe right now. I’ve had concussions. Obviously I’ve been racing a long time, but not in a long time (suffered a concussion). When I was younger,
back in my Sprint Car days, I had several. In my case, I definitely knew when I should or shouldn’t be in that race car. But you can’t speak for anybody else. But I would trust the driver’s judgment on that and whether they think they did a mandatory thing, I don’t know.”
 
HOW LIKELY WOULD YOU BE TO TAKE YOURSELF OUT OF A RACE IF YOU HAD A CONCUSSION?
“Oh, I’d do it in a heartbeat if I felt like my brain wasn’t right and the visual side of it wasn’t right. Oh yeah, I wouldn’t hesitate.”
 
WHAT’S THE BEST PART ABOUT THE START OF THE SEASON?
Just to come back out and compete. Over the winter, we got more stuff going and we have cars and you just come out and see where you stack up. I think at Baldwin’s we’ve made big improvements this winter with personnel, just adding. We’ve got more sponsorship than we’ve had. We’ve got more people than we’ve had and so I hope it shows on the race track.”
 
IS THERE A POINT IN THE SEASON WHERE IT BECOMES A LITTLE LESS EXCITING?
“For sure (laughs). That’s all dependent on anything you do. The better you’re doing, the more exciting it is, right? (laughs). So, you’re struggling. Yeah, the excitement leaves pretty quick.”
 
 
HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH UPS & DOWNS
“Well, you just learn to balance it and learn that it’s not the end of the world. You think it is at that moment, but it’s okay, let’s try to learn something from it and move on.”
 
ON HAVING FLORIDA LOTTERY AS HIS SPONSOR
“It was fun, actually. I was not looking forward to it first, I’ll admit. But it’s a fun thing. It’s a cool sponsor for us to have and I can’t wait to have the car out here in the 500.
 
HAVE YOU BEEN DOING FACEBOOK AND OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA FOR A LONG TIME?
“No, I was forced into it about a year ago (laughs); by my PR people at Tommy Baldwin. But it’s a fun thing. I don’t probably use it at all or as much as I should. But when I do, it’s fun to see everybody jump on there and reply and for the younger guys, even my son, Ryan, doesn’t use it a ton, but he has fun with it too. He’ll get one there and ask okay, let’s just open it up for questions and a bunch of people ask questions. It’s fun for them.”

NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
SPEED WEEKS MEDIA DAY
DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT
FEBRUARY 14, 2013

REGAN SMITH, NO. 51 GUY ROOFING CHEVROLET SS, met with media and discussed what goes through his mind during a crash, winning the Southern 500 and other topics.  Full Transcript:
 
WHAT ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT WHEN YOU ARE ABOUT TO GET IN A CRASH?
“I think the first thing is how to I avoid it if you are about to get in it.  Once you know that you are in it, it’s more of a process.  When you are coming up on a crash that you think you might be involved in a crash you are thinking ‘how do I get out of it’?  When you know you are going to be involved in it you are thinking ‘okay how do I minimize damage’ that would be the next thing you are thinking about.  So you are trying to avoid as much of the other cars and steer out of it as much as you can.  When you know you are going to be in it and it’s going to be catastrophic you are thinking ‘okay what should I do next’.  You are along for the ride at that point and you are hoping it doesn’t hurt too bad.”
 
DO YOU EVER SLIDE OVER IN THE SEAT?  DO YOU EVER CLOSE YOUR EYES?
“If you can slide over in the seat that is bad.  You shouldn’t be able to move in your seat.  You should be pretty well strapped in good.  No, you can’t slide in the seat.  I usually don’t personally close my eyes.  I have only had one wreck that I remember recently that I closed my eyes in and it was Talladega.  I thin in 2011 and it was the hardest hit I ever remember taking.  Just no chance to slow down or anything like that.  Typically don’t close my eyes sometimes I take my hands off the wheel.  I’ve broken my wrist recently in a race car and don’t really want to do it again by catching it in the steering wheel spoke.  I play it cautious on that and pull my hands back.”
 
DID YOUR FIRST NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES WIN AT DARLINGTON GIVE YOU A SENSE OF ADDED CONFIDENCE?  A SENSE THAT YOU BELONG AT THIS LEVEL?
“It doesn’t hurt definitely.  Confidence is something that grows with you as you race and as you’re around.  I was maybe a guy that came in and tried to not ruffle feathers and keep things clean and do things the right way.  That for me was a moment where it was like ‘okay I can race with these guys and I belong with these guys”.  I belong next to them and I belong door-to-door even though it was with a smaller team at the time and now fast forward even to the Nationwide Series.  I expect it now.  It’s not a matter of ‘okay do I or don’t I’ I expect to be up there and be door-to-door with the best guys.”
 
WHAT ARE YOUR BEST MEMORIES FROM THAT NIGHT AND SOME OF THE CELEBRATION WHO YOU SHARED IT WITH.  IS THERE ANYTHING THAT STANDS OUT THAT YOU HOLD DEAR?
“I think the guys that took the time to come to Victory Lane.  There was a group of them that took the time and came down there and congratulated me.  That meant a lot.  I think some of the memories that I don’t really necessarily remember from the following night are more memorable (laughs).”
 
IF YOU DIDN’T HAVE THAT WIN, HOW WOULD YOUR MINDSET BE DIFFERENT?  WOULD IT BE DIFFERENT AT ALL?
“I don’t know that it would be different.  You get that first win then you want to get the second one. Then you want to get the third one.  You want to continue to do that.  You want to be the guy that can go out and win 10 races a year.  I think that, at least I can speak for myself in saying that I believe that I can do that.  It’s just a matter of being in the right situations and opportunities which from my standpoint I’m fortunate that I got the Nationwide car this year and it’s great equipment, a great team and I can go out there and showcase my talent.  Hopefully, we can have lots of wins and enjoy that.  It’s a situation where if you get one you want another.  If you get two you want a third.  There is never enough you always want more.”
 

 NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
SPEED WEEKS MEDIA DAY
DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT
FEBRUARY 14, 2013
 
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA, NO. 42 TARGET CHEVROLET SS, met with media and discussed racing at Daytona, the new Chevrolet SS Sprint Cup Series car, improvements to the team and other topics.
 
ARE YOU STILL FEELING GOOD ABOUT YOUR WIN IN THE ROLEX 24 HOUR? “I think the Rolex win was definitely a plus. It is fun. Different than the other wins was actually finishing the race. I think it was pretty special. Makes it a little bit more fun. To tell you the truth, 2011 and 2012 were hard. In ’12, it was one of those years that everything could go wrong went wrong. If we ran well, it would break down. If we ran bad, we ran all day. We just didn’t seem to get it right. I think over the winter they realized, even last year, how much work needed to be done to get ourselves more competitive. I believe the homework has been done.  Are we going to fix the whole problem? Not 100% sure, but I think we are definitely going in the right direction. We are going testing and we are competitive. I think that it is a good sign.”
 
ARE YOUR NUMBERS MORE A REFLECTION OF WHERE THE ORGANIZATION HAS BEEN, AND NOT YOUR GROWTH? “It is kind of crazy. I always said it would take about three years, and in year three, everything was good. We made the Chase. We were leading races and fighting for wins and stuff. Even the year after was good. Then the next two years have been really hard years. I think as a team when there were a lot of changes made, we just took a step back. We finally put all the right tools and things in place. Chip (Ganassi, team owner) put in a lot over the last year in getting better equipment and more simulation and stuff into the team. I think it is paying off.”
 
HAS IT BEEN HUMBLING? “It is not humbling, it sucks.  It’s not about humbling. I’ve won at everything I have been in, and I came to NASCAR and I’ve been good. I know I can do it. To run where we’ve run, it hasn’t been fun. It hasn’t been fun for Chip, or Jamie (McMurray) or myself, or the crew chiefs, or the organization or Target. We know we have the right tools to make it work, and I think this year we’ve done enough over the winter that is going to put us in a better situation. I think going to a new car helps. I think taking some of the things people were doing like the rear bushing, the track arm bushing and track bars, and things like that which are going away, I think are going to make us more competitive because they are going to lose some of their advantage. As well, we are making ourselves better.”
 
HOW PIVOTAL A YEAR IS THIS GOING TO BE FOR YOU? “I think every year is. I don’t know make or break what. I made the Chase two or three years ago. There has been two hard years. I think not only for myself, but Jamie. We ran pretty close together. Even last year as bad as we ran, we had two poles. I always run as hard as I can, and that is all I can do.”
 
ARE YOU THE SAME DRIVER? “I think I’m a lot better driver than I was four or five years ago. I have not only the open wheel experience, but the stock car experience. I understand how the races work. How everything is done. So, yes, way better.”
 
 
IS YOUR EDGE THE SAME? “Yes.  It is kind of funny. People say the edge or these or that, and you look, I get in the GRAND-AM car that is a car that can win races, and you dominate. It’s completely different.”
 
DID YOU EVER START TO WONDER IF THIS WAS THE RIGHT PLACE TO BE? “No, not the right place to be. I am committed to Chip and to Target. And, we are committed to make this work. As long as that is the case, yes, we’re going to try to make this work. Chip is committed to it. When he fired Brian (Pattie), and he fired everybody else, he didn’t think that was working and he needed new people, he hired new people. As everybody starts coming together, you kind of expect everybody to work perfect side-by-side from day one. But they have to understand, and understand the problem. One you understand the problems, then you can find solutions.”
 
WHAT ABOUT NASCAR IN GENERAL? WHEN YOU CAME HERE SIX YEARS AGO, YOU TALKED ABOUT THE COMPARISON TO F1:  “Racing is still amazing. I still love it. I still love being here. But, when you’re not running good, it’s not fun. I don’t think it is fun for anybody.”
 
WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR VALENTINES DAY? “I will put it this way. This morning my wife woke up and said ‘Happy Valentine’s Day’ and I went ‘Oh no, I forgot’.  Yes, that wasn’t good. Her birthday is next Tuesday, so we are doing a dinner at home on Monday, and I am inviting everybody and getting everything sorted out. Getting the food, and everything myself. So it never even crossed my mind about Valentine’s Day.  So I screwed up there.”
 
WELL, YOU GOT HER A ROLEX WATCH: “Yes, she took my Rolex. Honestly she did. I gave the watch to someone at the trophy presentation in Victory Lane, and I came back to the motorhome, and she’s wearing the watch. So I thought ‘Okay’. “
 
HAVE YOU SEEN IT SINCE THEN? “No.  But that’s fine. As much as I suffered over the last couple of years, she’s been there as well. We enjoy the success together, as much as we enjoy the hard times together.”
 
WHAT IS HER NAME? HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN MARRIED?  “Connie. 10 years.”
 
YOU HAVE THREE KIDS AND A DOG. HOW HAS THE DOG BEEN? “The dog is great. I don’t deal with it, so it is great.  I play with it. That’s all that I do. That was the deal. To tell you the truth, the dog is a funny story. Do I like dogs? Yes, I like dogs. Do I want to have a dog? No, I don’t want to have a dog. I had dogs when I was a kid. Parents are so excited, they give you a dog. You play with dog for a month, and the rest of the life of the dog, the parents have got to take care of it because the kids never play with it again. It is a fact. It is what it is. They have been trying to convince me to get a dog. I said the deal is simple, I don’t clean, I don’t feed, I don’t anything. I will play with the dog, I will love the dog, but I don’t want to take care of it and they said okay. So I said okay, we’ll get the dog. So, it’s all good.”
 
HOW MUCH GRIEF DO YOU STILL GET FOR THE JET DRYER? “Way too much. I actually got mad at somebody this morning for saying there is a bigger one now. People are dumb enough to think I hit the thing on purpose, like I really want to try and kill myself. It is kind of crazy. That was a freak accident, and in a way, I was very very lucky to walk away from that one. Not only myself, but the guy driving the jet dryer. To walk away with nothing out of that it was a miracle. I was glad it was over.”
 
DO YOU TALK TO DUANE BARNS, THE GUY WHO DROVE THE JET DRYER? “I did at the time, yes.”
 
WHEN YOU GOT OUT OF THAT CAR, YOU SEEMED WOBBLY: “Yes, I actually. My foot hurt. The clutch pedal sliced my boot open. And I bent the pedal from the impact.  I got out of the car and leaned on my foot, and it was painful.”
 
WHAT EXACTLY WENT WRONG ON THE CAR? “One of the truck arms broke.”
 
HOW SCARY WAS THAT MOMENT? “You know you are going to hate something, and you know whatever direction you are sliding, you know that is where you are going.”
 
YOU ARE IN A GOOD MOOD, ARE YOU GLAD TO BE BACK? “I am excited to be back. I’ve been working really hard over the off season at training, and testing, and with the team. I don’t think we can be better prepared than we are right now. The hard thing at Daytona with the restrictor plates, it doesn’t show how good you really are or where you stand until you get to race two or three. We were good here in testing. The Hendrick motors were really good. Our cars seem really good, so we are ex
cited.”
 
DID CHRIS (HEROY, CREW CHIEF) HAVE A LEARNING CURVE LAST YEAR? “Absolutely. A tough one.”
 
IS HE A LOT FURTHER ALONG NOW? “Yes, I think he had a bit of reality check when he came in. I think when you come from Hendrick, everything is the way it is supposed to be. The cars are good. I don’t think he needed to worry about how quick the car was, the chassis, or this or that. He came into a world where he needed to make sure the chassis were right. There was a lot of things that we needed to work on. We wanted to try a lot of things, and things weren’t working on the car, like that bushing that everyone was doing. We could never make that work. There were a lot of things that really hurt our performance.”
 
WILL THE UNLIMITED SHOW US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT HOW THE CARS ARE GOING TO PERFORM? “I think it is going to show how the cars are going to draft, and how they are going to run. I’m glad I’m in it. Last year, it was exciting when we got those two poles because they were a big deal for us. We needed something to show for our efforts. Getting those poles were pretty big. To come out of that is a big benefit here. At that time how the Bud Shootout, or the Sprint Unlimited now, was going to be. Now to know that being on-pole is a plus, I think it is going to have benefits.”
 
WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE A 20-LAP SEGMENT AT THE END? “Whatever they bring. For us to wreck, it takes about lap. 20-10-5 are plenty. (LAUGHS).”
 
WHEN YOU GOT IN THE NEW CAR FOR THE FIRST TIME, WAS THERE A DISCERNIBLE DIFFERENCE? “The first time I got in it, they were trying to decide on which side of the aero package to go, and they had taken all of the downforce out of the car. We were at Texas. I was like ‘oh really, we don’t like this’.  We were sliding around, it wasn’t fun. The next time I got in the car was at Charlotte, and they had all the extra downforce in it, and I was like ‘oh, now this is a race car’. It was fun. I think they understood where they needed to go with it.”
 
DID THEY GIVE YOU MORE GRIP WITH IT? “It is a little more predictable. I think there are a couple of things that are really playing to my driving style. I think it is going to be a plus.”
 
HAS ANY TIME IN THE LAST FEW YEARS, HAS YOUR CONFIDENCE BEEN SHAKEN? “You always wonder ‘can I do anything different’? But, even when you run good, you think about how you can make it better. It is hard. When the cars don’t have enough speed, you can compensate for a little bit, but if they aren’t good, they aren’t good. I was telling someone the other day, we are not miracle workers. So you start trying different things, and sometimes you make more damage than help by trying different things.”
 
HAVE YOU EVER HAD A STRETCH THIS LONG OF STRUGGLES IN YOUR CAREER? “No, not really. The beginning of 2011 wasn’t that bad. The first half of the year wasn’t bad, then Brian left and we went downhill, and 2012 was a hard year. You look for example restrictor plate races have never been really good races for me. One thing or the other. We didn’t finish a single one last year. The two races that we have a shot a winning easily are the road courses, and we were good at both of them. One we had a fuel pickup problem, and the other one the suspension broke. It’s like ‘really?’  Everything that could go wrong went wrong. So, it was hard. They throw at you things you can handle, and I’m good with it. It’s tough, but I’m motivated, and I’ve been working hard. I don’t want to leave anything on the table so it’s good.”
 
WHAT’S THE DOG’S NAME? “Spot. It’s a French Bulldog.”